


Hunting Grounds

by emi_lyliz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:33:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11843124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emi_lyliz/pseuds/emi_lyliz
Summary: A compilation of lengthy Supernatural one-shots.





	1. The Fox and the Hound

**Picture this.**

A man is running through the forest—just off the government-watched state park grounds outside Olanta, South Carolina. He’s a hunter, chasing down prey for food and for sport. However, this time around he’s found himself on the wrong end of the deal. In a trip gone amiss, he’s now being chased—his predator in hot pursuit and moving through the trees faster than any person ever should. He knew there had been disappearances in that neck of the woods recently. He’d be damned if he succumbed to the same thing; call it a matter of pride.

It’s a common trope for the protagonist in this situation to stumble upon some sort of obstacle—such as a vine or a tree branch—that causes them to trip. It has been used countless times in cinema. Our hunter here never bought into it; after all, it was just to manufacture tension. No real person was idiotic enough to trip like that without fail. At least, that’s what he would have said before his current situation. Given it was the dead of autumn, the floor was covered in hazards that were all delicately concealed beneath layers of brown leaves. It was much more difficult to remain upright than he’d imagined it’d be. Still, he held his ground. He knew enough about hunting to know he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t sure whether he was gaining ground on his pursuant or not, but he dared not look back. He was struggling enough to stay on his feet running forwards; backwards was suicide.

He heard his chaser call out for him. “You can’t out run me,” the voice said—a woman’s voice that sent chills down his spine. Breathing heavier than ever, he picked up his pace slightly.

“Try me, bitch,” he taunted, now feeling more confident than was warranted. As if to intentionally put him in his place, the woman appeared in front of him. He could have sworn she showed up out of thin air. Desperate to survive, he stopped himself before reaching her arms’ length and darted off in the opposite direction.

For a time, he couldn’t hear her following him. He wanted to believe she’d stopped her chase, but he, as a hunter himself, knew that was a simple delusion of arrogant optimism. It was a tactic he’d used himself many times; being as still and quiet as possible while never losing sight of the target, giving a false sense of security and stripping it away with blood.

He refused to be eliminated using his own tactics, humility be damned. However, out of a blend of curiosity and nerve, he paused for a hot second to turn and look around to try and pinpoint her location. After all, if he went in blind, for all he knew he’d be heading right for her, and he couldn’t afford to take that chance with his life literally hanging in the balance.

He was panting as he surveyed the surroundings. In every direction he saw nothing but uninterrupted forest; everything looked identical between north, south, east, west, and everything in between—with the exception of his own trail of footprints coming toward him from the northwest. Wherever she was, it could be absolutely anywhere, and, as it stood, he’d have no way of knowing unless she wanted him to.

Feeling somewhat defeated, he sighed and decided to start heading dead east. Better to keep going in the wrong direction and die trying than to stand still and wait for an inevitable death. Besides, if by chance he picked the right way, he had a chance of survival—and he was the gambling type.

So, now with more resolve than ever, he sprinted through the trees, hoping to lose her amongst the foliage.

He didn’t.

Just like she had done earlier, she appeared before him from seemingly nowhere, stopping him dead in his tracks. However, before he’d been lucky enough to get away. He couldn’t manage to repeat it.

He was now in her grasp, thrashing and fighting like his own game would in his place. Too little, too late, but he began to sympathize with his prey in that instant.

She separated his head from his shoulders with nothing but brute force, and that was the end of that.

**Sam and Dean Winchester assumed the hunt a week later.**

§§§§§ 

**27 October**

“Run me through what we’re dealing with again,” Dean instructed Sam as he drove down I-95. It wasn’t often that the Winchesters entered states via the main-access highways—tolls are a bitch, after all. However, when the opportunity presented itself, Dean wasn’t necessarily going to shoulder it. What could be more appealing to him than taking the interstate? The only place Dean Winchester was more in-his-element than when on a hunt was driving fast, one hand on the wheel, windows down. And so here he was doing exactly that, hauling ass from one comfort zone to the next.

“Last week a man was found dead in the forest outside Olanta. With his head detached. Ripped clean off his shoulders.”

“Ripped?”

“Yeah—like, actually ripped.”

“Sounds like one of ours.”

“And get this—he’s not the first body. Two women went missing the week before, and a group of men on a hunting trip vanished just a few days before them. All seven were found dead—but by a bullet to the heart.”

“That doesn’t sound like one of ours.”

Sam shrugged. “I mean, seven deaths so close together like that—followed by an eighth that has the coroner stumped? We’ve driven farther for less, Dean.”

“Fair enough, then,” Dean conceded with a shrug, putting the pedal closer to the metal as he picked up the pace to Olanta.

Within an hour, they arrived at their motel, a conveniently-located lodge-style joint just a few miles from the supernatural hunting ground. However, they’d chosen the spot for more than its proximity. As it stood, the eight corpses belonged to people who’d rented there and never made it home. A place that suspicious warranted a Winchester’s attention.

“We need to book a room,” Dean informed the clerk, inclining his chin to appear professional.

“We’re not open. The property’s taken a nasty hit from all the recent deaths—bad publicity and all,” she replied. “Sorry, boys. Looks like you’ll have to find somewhere else.” Sam noted how she signed what she was saying as she spoke.

“Lot of disabled patients out here?” he asked, looking down to her hands then back up to her face.

She nodded. “It’s a bit of a popular destination for the elderly; we see a lot of people come in out here that are hard of hearing or blind or otherwise. Helps make my job easier if I can sign,” she informed. She cleared her throat. “But none of that matters, because we’re closed. Good day, gentlemen.”

“We have cash,” Sam said, stepping forward to stand next to Dean, who shifted slightly to his right to make way. “And, well, we’re here on federal business.”

“Federal?” she asked, skeptical. She narrowed her eyes, examining them and their effects. “I highly doubt that. Take it elsewhere, would you? I’ve had my fill of hunters this week.”

“Hunters?” the Winchesters echoed in unison. They both looked at one another before directing attention back to the clerk.

“Yeah—you know, hunters. Surly men, deep voice—bit of a gut. Gun fetish. Hunters. This far into the woods, it’s not uncommon for them to turn up here, but usually we don’t see this many until deer season. But everyone’s just dying to catch the thing responsible for these killings—or, the person, I suppose. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks ‘round these parts.”

Dean rolled his eyes and looked back up at his brother. It appeared that they and the clerk had two differing definitions of the term _hunter_. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and placed a hand on the table as he looked to her again, intent on securing the location. “Look, uhm…” he trailed off as he eyed her name tag. “Rebecca. We’re not hunters, okay? We’re federal. We have proof,” he insisted.

“Let me see it, then.”

“Sure thing,” Sam assured. He and Dean reached into their jackets and procured two charlatan FBI badges. “Agents Coverdale and Lifeson.”

She pursed her lips, clearly still put off by the situation. “Right. And why exactly did the FBI send a member of Deep Purple and the guitarist from Rush into God’s country, South Carolina?”

“Your town’s got eight dead bodies on its hands, Rebecca. Sounds like our kind of gig to me,” Dean answered. “Now, how about that room?”

She rolled her eyes, but obliged. “Here’s a key,” she replied, handing it to Dean. “Good luck with your investigation. Everyone either goes into that forest and comes out with nothing or doesn’t come out at all.”

“We’re professionals,” Dean assured. “I think we got some tricks up our sleeve whatever the hell is out there isn’t prepared for.”

She shook her head, but her smile told a different story. “Like I said,” she responded, turning to face him. “Good luck.”

§§§§§

The Winchesters took up, albeit temporary, residence in the motel, tossing their bags onto their respective beds and looking the place up and down. For a joint in the backwoods, it was decently well-kempt—far better accommodations than they typically received. There weren’t any mysterious scents or stains, so it was a success in their eyes—though perhaps their bar was too low.

Settled in the best they could be, Sam pulled his laptop from his belongings and plugged it in. He sat down at their table and gave Dean a shrug. “What do you say we hit up the morgue?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Dean replied, faking wistfulness.

Sam rolled his eyes but gave Dean a reluctant chuckle. He took a second to find the address before getting back to his feet and following his brother out the door.

Once they arrived, they were greeted by the local coroner—an aging man with a boy’s features and a short fuse. He scowled at their badges upon being presented them, long enough that Sam and Dean began fretting they’d maybe been found out.

To their relief, they hadn’t been. The explanation they received was, “Damn feds. If _you’re_ here, it means we got so much more paperwork to deal with. You know, I moved out of Charleston and into the country to _avoid_ shit like this.”

Dean and Sam exchanged looks before Dean raised an eyebrow to the coroner. “Right, well, our apologies, I guess?” he replied, somewhat taken aback. “How about we make this short and we’ll get out of your hair as quick as we can. Hell—we’ll even handle that paperwork for you.”

The coroner pursed his lips, leading the boys to the morgue where he pulled out the slot containing the relevant cadaver’s body and a bin that held his head. “Here he is, gentlemen. Adam Frost—good hunter, but that’s about all I could tell you. Bit of a drifter. Been in and around these parts for years, but didn’t own any properties in town—motel hopper, I assume. That’s all we got on him.”

Sam nodded slightly, surveying the remains. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Hey, you’re taking over—whatever you say,” the coroner replied, stepping out of the room. “If you want the other stiffs, I’ve got the women, but the men I can’t speak for.”

“What happened to them?” Dean asked, his interest now piqued. “I thought you said they were killed by a shot to the heart.”

“No, I said the _women_ were killed that way, but I guess the reporters tagged the men with that line too. Those bodies were incinerated.”

“You cremated them?” Sam questioned.

“No—not us. Whoever killed them. We never issued a presumed cause of death for them because the bodies were ash by the time we got to them. Best guess? Whoever killed the girls shot the men and tried to cover their tracks. But word got out, and by the time this… psychopath got around to the women and Adam over there, he couldn’t be bothered anymore.”

“Right,” Dean replied, looking back to Adam’s corpse. “Thanks.”

“Good luck, you two,” the coroner scoffed. “The Bureau’s about to have a field day with this one.” With that, he left, allowing Sam and Dean to discuss their angles.

“What the hell?” Dean asked.

“I got nothing.”

“No, seriously, Sam. What the hell?”

“Dean, I don’t know. Three groups of targets, three distinct causes of death? Five bodies cremated? I couldn’t _begin_ to explain this.”

“Maybe it just ain’t our problem, Sam. Some deranged dick shot the women and burned the men alive.”

“And then what? Developed superhuman strength and decapitated Adam with his bare hands? Yeah, you’re right. Sounds like your average Dahmer to me.”

“Alright, alright, settle down. We’ll keep digging, but, Sam, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start here,” Sam suggested, placing Adam’s head in front of his brother.

Dean sighed, pulling the bin towards himself. “What exactly am I looking for here?” he asked as he began examining, his face reflexively contorted in disgust.

“Anything helpful,” Sam replied with a shrug. “How should I know?”

Dean rolled his eyes but kept digging nonetheless. Sure enough, he uncovered something useful. “Well, that’s a gamechanger,” he said, his eyes widening slightly.

Sam inclined his head. “What is it?”

“Marie Antoinette’s got himself a set of retractable vampire fangs,” Dean said with a sigh, pushing the bin away from himself. “Things just got interesting.”

“Alright, so maybe Adam was responsible for the deaths and a hunter got to him.”

“Right, because so many vampires like to shoot and/or burn their prey without taking a bite for themselves.”

“Maybe not,” Sam sighed. “So then what the hell?”

“You ask that like I have any more answers than you do,” Dean scoffed. “I’ll tell you one thing though—I’m willing to bet those women ate bullets made of silver.”

Taking up his brother’s hunch, Sam read the names on the slots until he found one he recognized from the article and pulled her out. In a small plastic bag next to her, he found the bullet she took and tilted his head to the side. Sure enough, “Silver,” he confirmed. As he went to put the body back, his nail grazed her shin and ripped a tear in her flesh. His body tensed as he pulled at the skin, taking it clean off the muscle. “Shapeshifter’s skin,” he assessed.

“I’ll repeat,” Dean replied. “Things just got interesting.”

§§§§§

“Okay, so clearly it’s some kind of… super-charged something, right?” Dean said, pacing around the motel room as he and Sam tried to come up with a theory.

“It’s got to be a hunter,” Sam established. He was situated in front of his laptop, sitting at the table with his head in his hands, thoroughly defeated in the moment. “There’s nothing else it _could_ be. It’s only going after monsters, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean conceded. “But that last kill wasn’t something your average hunter could swing, Sammy. Something’s definitely up around here, I just can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell it is.”

Sam sighed, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. “You got me,” he replied, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t even know if I can say for sure we should even be _after_ it.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, I mean, so far it’s done nothing but good, right? In theory? It’s taken down a vampire and two shapeshifters—and that’s what we know of. Those five men could have been anything. Isn’t it more of a public service than a threat?”

“Sammy, when has it _ever_ been that easy?” Dean scoffed. “I want to say I agree, but I don’t feel comfortable walking away from this just yet—not until we get some other information at least. If it’s actually helpful, we’ll let it walk—we’ve done it before. But let’s at least do our damn job and do it right first, how about it?”

Sam shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” he agreed. “But how do you figure we find anything out. So far, it’s only ever gone after inhuman things, and the two of us are flesh and blood men.”

Dean pursed his lips, stopping his pacing to come up with a plan. “Do you think it’ll go for Cas?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, so he closed it and sighed through his nose, looking down to his hands. Dean inclined his chin as he awaited his brother’s verdict, which couldn’t come sooner—he was growing fairly impatient.

“He’s supernatural, ain’t he?” Dean added, vouching for his idea.

“He’s an _angel_ , Dean,” Sam scoffed.

“Which makes him not human.”

“But he’s not a _monster_ ,” Sam refuted. “So far this thing’s only gone for Eve’s creations. Who’s to say something of God would do the trick?”

“Who’s to say it wouldn’t?” Dean replied. “Look, if you got a better solution, I’m all ears. Until then, I say we give it a go.”

“So what—we offer him up as bait to the supernatural killing machine?” Sam questioned, now looking his brother dead in the eyes, narrowing his own.

“I think Castiel can hold his own against… whatever it is that’s out there.”

Sam shook his head.

“Like I said, I’ll take whatever solution you seem to have that’s any good.”

Sam sighed. “Alright, fine,” he conceded. “We’ll give it a shot.”

“That a boy, Sammy.”

“But we’re tailing him—keeping him out of trouble.”

“It’s almost like he didn’t spend millennia fighting heavenly battles or something,” Dean chuckled. “He’s an _angel_ , Sam. Give the man some credit.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but he wore a smile nonetheless. He extended his hands toward Dean. “Well,” he prompted, clapping them back together. “It’s all you.”

“What? Why?” Dean protested, furrowing his brows.

“Because—after _everything_ —the man still answers to you better,” Sam replied coolly. “And besides, it was your idea anyway. So pray to him.”

“Yeah, look, I’ve got a better idea,” Dean said, retrieving his cell from within his jacket. “We’re living in the 21st century, Sam. Who needs praying when I have an angel on speed dial?”

Sam shook his head at his brother, but his smile still remained intact. “I guess that works too,” he conceded, standing up and leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

Dean pulled up Cas’ number in his contacts and tapped it to give it a rang, casually putting the phone to his ear and resting his arm against the headboard of the bed waiting for the line to pick up. Impatient as he was, he began drumming his fingertips on the headboard.

“Dean?” a familiar voice greeted, confused but inviting nonetheless. Dean noted the hint of concern in his friend’s salutation—after all, Dean only ever called from a hunt if something was horribly sideways, so as far as Castiel knew the Winchesters had gotten themselves somewhere they couldn’t get out of. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“We’re fine, Cas,” Dean assured with a light chuckle. “Calm down; nothing’s wrong. We’re just following up on a hunch.”

“What is it, then?”

“This hunt got a little… stranger than we were expecting. Figured you could help out,” Dean said, putting off asking for help for as long as he could manage it.

“You’re going to need to tell me more if you want me to actually be able to do anything, you know.”

“Basically, whatever the hell we’re tracking—it’s not after humans.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Everyone that’s died has been a monster; the most recent was a vampire, the women were shapeshifters, and the group of men could be fucking anything. The point is, Sam and I aren’t exactly this thing’s type, if you catch my drift?”

“You’re asking me to bait your trap.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Where are you?”

“Olanta, South Carolina. It’s just shy of a day’s drive out here from the bunker.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can, Dean.”

“Thanks, man. Really owe you one. And hey, for the record—Sam and I will be right behind you the whole time. Got nothing to worry about.”

“I wasn’t worried, Dean. If I were worried, you’d have known. But Dean—are you sure this is going to work anyway?”

“What’s stopping it?”

“I mean, I’m not human, but I’m an _angel_ , Dean. I don’t know of anything but a demon, a hunter, or another one of us that’d be dumb enough to try and contest that.”

“Right, Sam said the same thing. But unfortunately, we’re fresh out of werewolves and ghouls, so looks like you’re the best bet we got right now, don’t it?”

“I’m on my way,” Castiel replied, hanging up once he had.

“He’s on his way,” Dean relayed to Sam, tossing his phone on the bed with a shrug.

§§§§§

Before Castiel would arrive, the Winchesters had almost a full day on their hands to kill. Sam insisted they use the time to figure out as much as they could in the meantime. After all, a full day open on a hunt was a godsend. Dean, however, substantiated that they lay low and wait it all out. After all, they still weren’t going to attract their prey’s attention; it hadn’t been taking humans the whole time it had been active, why would it start just because the Winchesters were in town?

“So what? We’re just supposed to sit here with our thumbs up our asses doing nothing? What if whatever’s out there hasn’t been doing this out of the goodness of its heart, Dean? We could _try_ to snuff it out, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s a good idea in theory, Sammy, but it’s not going to go for us. Our friend out there ain’t got a taste for human flesh—what was the word for it Travis taught me?”

“Long pig?”

“Yeah, that. It hasn’t got a taste for long pig, and you know it. So what’s the use in going out there to achieve nothing when we could actually take a moment to _breathe_? I mean, really, Sammy. When in the hell does a _hunter_ ever get the chance to take it easy for roughly 20 hours?”

“Fine. You stay here and do jack, and _I’ll_ go use this time to our advantage.”

“You say that until you come up empty-handed.”

Sam rolled his eyes and headed out the door anyway. He wasn’t angry with Dean for their disagreement; it wouldn’t be the first time something along the lines had happened, after all. Still, he was just competitive enough to have his mind, body, and soul gunning for something to prove his brother wrong—for no reason but pride, as it stood. Leaving Dean behind, he wandered out into the lobby. Truth be told, he was heading out blind; other than Castiel, who wouldn’t be in for a good bit of time, they had no leads—hell, they weren’t sure Cas would prove to be a lead anyway. Nonetheless, he was determined to make some sort of progress in the meantime, leads be damned.

As he looked over the lobby, his eyes caught Rebecca and a realization came to him. “Of course,” he said to himself, making strides toward her as she stood still at her post behind the front desk. He continued talking to himself, saying, “Everyone that… _thing_ out there got—every single monster—rented out here.” He was beginning to put things together; Rebecca would have met all the victims. Surely her resolve to remain in her position despite the closure of the motel _and_ her establishment’s connection to the deceased wasn’t coincidental. As fate would have it, hunting wasn’t a profession rife with coincidence.

She noticed his approaching before he said a word. Odd, given how quiet his footsteps were. Upon seeing him, she tensed her entirety. However, once he arrived, she cleared her throat and threw her hair over her shoulder, acting casual. “Agent Coverdale,” she greeted, feigning a collected smile.

“Rebecca,” he returned, inclining his chin. “I have some questions to ask you,” he informed. He tossed his counterfeit badge to the side. “Off the record,” he added, leaning into her.

Her eyes widened and Sam noticed her getting slightly less comfortable. “If you’re trying to ask me out, the answer’s no. Some advice? Get a less intimidating tactic.”

“I’m not looking for trouble. Or a hook-up, actually. I just want some intel.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I know. Figured you were going to ask about the goings-on ‘round here at some point. Expected the ‘off the record’ play too. I know your kind, Winchester.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You know my name?”

“Yeah, of course. You’re a friend of hers, she said. She told me you and your brother would be around eventually. Said not to get in your way. So I’m not.”

“Right,” Sam said, nodding slowly. “And who might _she_ be?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Hell if I know. She never said.”

Sam sighed, but kept his shoulders back.

“And besides, you have to give me credit. My kind knows a hunter when he walks in the door,” she scoffed.

“Your _kind_?”

She nodded. “Lycanthrope, werewolf, whatever you want to call it. I was born into it—second generation. But don’t worry about me, Winchester. All I’ve done the whole time is help her find her targets when they walk in that door,” she said, pointing to the entrance. “I can sniff out a supernatural being as easily as a human, you know. It’s been a major help, she said.”

Sam pursed his lips.

“Honest to god, I haven’t hurt anyone. Use your brain, Winchester. I obviously live in the middle of god’s country for a reason, right? I’ve been feeding off wildlife my whole life. You got nothing to worry ‘bout with me. And as far as she’s concerned, you needn’t worry there either. All she’s doing is exactly what y’all would in her position—hunting.”

“Thanks, Rebecca,” Sam said abruptly, not bothering to pay proper thanks for the insight. He turned and walked away, heading straight out the door. Whoever—whatever—she was, he was going to find her. What he’d do when he did, he wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t important in the moment. She knew him—and presumably his brother. The hunt had gotten more personal and exceptionally more interesting, as it had been by the minute it would appear.

§§§§§

Castiel finally arrived, and upon meeting Rebecca the two of them were instantly apprehensive of one another. “We’re not open,” she stated before taking note of his scent as she rummaged through papers on the desk. Once she did, she looked up at him, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Werewolf?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “Did Dean call me in on a werewolf hunt? Must be losing his touch.”

“What the _hell_ are you?” she asked, panting. “I can tell you’re not human, but I—your scent is unfamiliar.”

“I’m an angel of the Lord,” he informed coolly. “And I’m assuming you’re the problem around here. Though, admittedly, I’m curious as to why you’d prey on Eve’s descendants and not humans.”

“Check your facts, feathers,” she taunted. “None of those bodies had their hearts missing. That ain’t werewolf behavior. Please just—just leave me alone, okay? I’ll give you a room, information, whatever. Hell, I won’t even tell her you’re supernatural; I’ll say you’re just a passing man in need of shelter and she’ll leave you right alone.”

“Who will?”

“God, not this again. Look, you little tree topper, I don’t know. All I can tell you is two fucking _Winchesters_ show up here and an angel follows them and the whole thing is above my paygrade. Just leave me out of it, okay?”

Castiel rolled his eyes, but obliged. “Alright,” he conceded. “You said the Winchesters? How do you know them?”

“Because she does,” Rebecca said, her voice still tense. “She told me not to get in their way, so I’ve been nothing but help. Ask, uhm—I don’t know who’s who, but I gave the giant one all the intel I have. I’m trying to be a wallflower here. Just like she wanted.”

“Right,” Castiel said. He inclined his chin. “Well, we want to meet her,” he replied. “So if you could do me a favor and tell her I’m… not human, that’d help.”

“She doesn’t have the equipment to kill an angel; just enough to take out the run-of-the-mill lowlifes. You know, vamps, wolves, skinwalkers, the like.”

“Then tell her I’m something else.”

“Fine, okay, I will. Just, for the love of Christ, leave me be otherwise, alright?”

“You have my word.”

She stepped away from the desk and headed into a room marked _Employees Only_. As Castiel made to go to the Winchesters’ room, he heard her call out the number to him.

He headed there, but was stopped in his tracks partway down the hall by Sam, who’d just come back in after seeing the headlights from Castiel’s car. “Hey, Cas,” he greeted, his hand resting on Castiel’s shoulder. They continued towards the room.

“Are you and your brother aware that the clerk is a werewolf?” Castiel asked, ignoring the greeting entirely.

“ _I_ am,” Sam replied. “I decided to do some digging while we waited up for you. And I hate to break it to you, but I think you made a trip out here for jack.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain it when we get to the room. Dean’s going to want to hear all of this.”

§§§§§

“A _ghost_?” Dean and Castiel exclaimed in unison.

“So why is she only going after monsters?” Castiel asked, his eyes narrow.

“Because she was a hunter when she was alive,” Sam answered. His eyes met Dean’s. “She knew us. I didn’t get a look at her, but Rebecca at the front desk told me everything she could. She didn’t know what exactly the hunter was, but the second I went out to that forest, I felt cold spots out the ass. It’s a hunter’s ghost, guys. It’s got to be. That’s why she’s only after creatures, not people. I guess she thinks it’s her unfinished business, you know? Hunting whatever remains on this god forsaken earth? Noble enough, I suppose.”

“How exactly does Rebecca know anything about this?” Dean asked, now more confused than before. “And how does this… _ghost_ even know us? I don’t know of a hunter—let alone an ally of ours—dying out in Olanta.”

“Rebecca’s a werewolf,” Sam and Castiel informed simultaneously.

“A _werewolf_?” Dean scoffed. “This just keeps getting better. I take it Smitey McSmiterton over here iced her, then?”

“Not exactly,” Castiel admitted.

“Why not?” Dean exclaimed.

“Because she’s only feeding off the wildlife,” Sam interrupted.

“ _Actually_ , her diet was fairly inconsequential. I told her I would let her be as long as she cooperated, and I like to keep to my word,” Castiel replied. “Conveniently enough, however, yes, she’s harmless.”

“So let me get this straight,” Dean said, gathering his thoughts. “Clerk lady’s got claws, and we’re hunting the ghost of one of our own who’s so damn dedicated to the life she’s out here taking them out from the grave. Except—and here’s the kicker—apparently she’s a friend of ours or something? Ain’t buying it.”

“Well, I say we go talk to her,” Sam suggested, rising to his feet.

“I told Rebecca to tell her I’m a monster, not an angel. I should be enough to draw her out,” Castiel said coolly.

“You told _Rebecca_ to relay information?” Dean asked.

“She can sniff out the supernatural, Dean. So when someone walks in and asks for a room, Rebecca lets the hunter know whether they’re game or not. It’s a pretty efficient system, seeing as nothing’s made it through this joint without her ending them,” Sam replied.

“Naturally,” Dean remarked. He stood up too, and Castiel followed. “Well, alright, then. Let’s talk to her.”

And so the trio headed out to the woods. On their way through the lobby, they talked Rebecca into tailing them. After all, she and their ghost friend had a connection, so they thought her presence would be helpful should something go sideways. She was less than thrilled about it. “You _told_ me you’d leave me alone, angel,” she pouted, staring daggers into Castiel.

“Honey, he’s gotten worse than a glare for less; no one likes a whiner. And besides, we’ll leave you alone _after_ we talk to your mistress. No one’s going to hurt you, but we need you here in case she doesn’t want to reason with us,” Dean said, stepping in to defend his friend.

Rebecca scoffed, rolling her eyes at Dean. “She’s not my ‘mistress,’” she insisted. “We have a mutual thing. I give her targets, she protects me—keeps hunters off my trail.”

“We’re here,” Dean retorted. “She clearly couldn’t hold up her end.”

“She said you were an exception.”

“We get that a lot,” Dean remarked, prideful.

“In the midst of all this chatter, did she ever tell you _why_ the Winchesters get a pass?” Castiel asked, trying to mediate the tensions. “Usually that’s a red flag, you know. These boys’ reputation doesn’t help them.”

“Thank you, Cas,” Dean sighed, patting him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the optimism.”

Castiel squinted his eyes, tilting his head. “Nothing I said was positive, Dean.”

Dean shook his head, but he wore a smile. “Angels, man,” he commented to Sam, who had been tuned into the conversation but remaining out of it. He wanted to keep his focus on the hunt.

“I didn’t bother her with too many questions. She didn’t have many for me, so I left it well enough alone too. Besides, I didn’t really give a damn, truth be told. Never had a hunter ‘round keeping my ass alive before; she’s been nothing but helpful to me. So whatever her reasons, they were good enough for me, honestly. But she did say y’all were friends when she was kicking—or allies? Either way, didn’t seem like there was bad blood to me,” Rebecca said with a shrug. “But ghosts are tricky. Hard to communicate between the veil. I could have gotten the wrong message.”

“That’s comforting,” Dean said.

They all stopped, simultaneously feeling the temperature drop drastically.

“Got you, bitch,” Dean called out to their guest, looking around the forest. No response. “Alright, here’s our play. Rebecca, Sam, and I will hang back here and greet her if she pops up. Cas, you go out and… act like a… what is it you told her he is?”

“A banshee. She never tires of icing them,” Rebecca informed.

“Alright, Cas, go act like a banshee,” Dean instructed.

“I do not know how to do that,” Castiel admitted.

“It ain’t hard,” Rebecca said. “Just don’t do anything… angelic or whatever. Be _natural_. She already thinks you’re a banshee, so it’s not like she’ll test you.”

“Fine,” Castiel replied, though still holding his doubts.

The four split up with Rebecca, Sam, and Dean waiting behind Castiel, hidden in the shadows of the forest.

It didn’t take long for the signs of paranormal activity to pick up radically once Castiel was seemingly on his lonesome. The temperature dropped even further as the leaves in the trees began rustling. A gold dagger flew from a distance and grazed Castiel’s shoulder despite his attempt to dodge it. Had he not been able to move, it would have pierced dead through his heart. As it happened, it was merely a flesh wound to his vessel; he would heal, no problem. After all, the ghost wouldn’t possess an angel blade, so what could she possibly do to him that’d be a threat?

“You missed,” he called, taunting her into the open.

He caught a quick glance of her, as she did him, and then there was silence; the wind ceased. Castiel furrowed his brows, confused. “Banshees are female,” the ghost called out to him. “Who are you?”

Castiel looked behind him to where Dean was hidden, eyes wide. He shrugged, alerting Dean of his predicament. Dean’s response was simply a nod. “Show yourself first,” he commanded.

There was no response. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. So he repeated, louder this time, “Show yourself.”

Rebecca tapped Sam on the shoulder. Making a point of him noticing her signing as she spoke, she told him, “My partner is deaf. She couldn’t hear in life; she can’t hear in death. Your angel friend’s shouting is futile.”

“She’s deaf?” Sam asked, lights beginning to turn on in his mind as he realized who it was. “No way in hell… I forgot she died in this neck of the county, but I—I thought she was gone for good? She was _dead_.”

“That’s how ghosts work, Winchester,” Rebecca retorted. She stepped out into the open, beside Castiel. She signed to her, “It’s Rebecca. Come out, please.”

There was a brief second of dead air before the ghost followed suit. “You’re the angel,” she stated coolly, looking Castiel up and down. “Castiel, I believe. They’ve mentioned you before. But what are—I thought there was a banshee?” she asked, looking over to Rebecca.

“Never was, Eileen,” Sam greeted, revealing himself now. He spoke slower than usual so she could read his lips in spite of the darkness, even though Rebecca stood off to the side translating his words into sign language for her. Dean followed shortly thereafter. “It’s been awhile.”

Eileen smiled brilliantly upon seeing Sam and Dean. “Well, I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed. She looked at Rebecca, near tearful with excitement. “Why didn’t you just _say_ the Winchesters were in?”

“Because you never know with spirits, honey. You’ve been out here awhile, so I wasn’t sure if you’d started… fixating yet,” Rebecca admitted. “Besides, it’s all good now.”

Eileen nodded. She looked Sam and Dean over individually.

“This raises a problem though, you know,” Dean said, the first to bring down the mood almost inevitably.

“How so?” Sam asked.

“She’s a _spirit_ , Sam. We can’t _leave_ her.”

“Well, we can’t burn the remains,” Sam contested.

“Yeah, about that,” Dean said, turning his attention to Eileen again. “How are you here? I assumed the Brits would have burned your bones.” Rebecca signed his words too, which made up for his faster pace than Sam’s. He slowed it down slightly when he noticed her squinting to make out the movements, and he took a step closer to her.

“They did,” she informed. “But they were careless enough to off their targets using hellhounds. Traces of my blood are everywhere around here. There’s no way they could have prevented this. Hindsight’s a bitch.”

Dean scoffed, amused. “Still, what exactly are we supposed to do about this?”

Castiel, saying nothing, stepped forward and placed a hand onto Eileen’s forehead. The outline of his hand began to glow, and Rebecca, Sam, and Dean looked on with intrigue. All three expected him to be sending her off to Heaven, and so when he stepped away and revealed Eileen still standing before them, they were taken by surprise.

“What the hell did you do, Cas?” Sam asked, looking Eileen up and down.

“I brought her back,” Castiel replied, proud. “I figured there was no getting rid of her, _and_ you two could use the allies. So I did a little resurrecting.” There was a pause. “It pays to have an angel around, you know.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean remarked, utterly thrilled. “You’re the MVP, you know that?”

And so all five exited the forest. Done with their hunt, the Winchesters and Castiel headed back to the bunker, taking Eileen with them. Rebecca opted to remain in Olanta, but made sure to keep the Winchesters’ contact information. “If anything else pops up in Olanta, y’all will be the first to know,” she said as she shook the boys’ hands.

And for a time, all was relatively pleasant, all things considered.


	2. The Ducking Stool

**Picture this.**

Salem’s a special city in that it gladly opens the doors to anyone, anything, anytime. The streets are littered with family-run joints selling supposed witch paraphernalia. Trial reenactments and museums for tourists are bountiful—businesswomen conduct seances and night tours. New England’s very own Lily Dale. Most, of course, are hoaxes. Commercial knock-offs that bear the name but couldn’t hold a candle to the real deal. Most, of course, wouldn’t know honest-to-God, straight-from-Hell, pure-blooded witchcraft if it killed them. It’s a gimmick—using the old With Trials as a launching pad for credibility.

However, with places like that, word’s going to get out. Genuine magic-bearers have worked and continue to work their craft there. Unfortunately (or uncannily fortunately, depending on outlook), the abundance of charlatan practice tends to overbear and drive them out, leaving them in search of a less occupied place to perform. Nonetheless, some stay. For a time.

A beautiful day New England—it’s been unseasonably warm in Salem, Massachusetts. It’s a Saturday, so the children are out and about, frolicking and enjoying the winter sun. Parents are tailing them, making small talk, wondering about the uncharacteristic weather patterns as of late. But, generally, everything’s typical, save for one woman.

She’s in her late twenties. She lies low, lives comfortably. She’s the single parent of a son, age seven. She works an average job, full-time in the insurance industry. She’s so exceptionally ordinary she makes vanilla have spice. As such, when her son pleaded her to take him to a séance at one of the many places that perform them, she obliged, but warned him not to take things too seriously. After all, ghosts are not real. She didn’t need her son pedaling the same mantras the rest of the city did.

So they went, along with her son’s older cousin, Abigail, who was in town visiting—to our woman’s dismay, for Abigail had her head so wrapped around the paranormal she couldn’t tell fact from fiction it seemed.

The psychic they chose, her name was Divya. She started off her ritual praising her audience for choosing a genuine medium rather than one of the countless frauds they could have gone to. She appreciated the enthusiasm for authenticity in a town so rife with imposters. By night’s end, she’d performed what our focal woman could only believe was a ritual as preposterously false as anywhere else would have. And thus, she and the children under her guidance exited—the kids ecstatic, herself less than so.

“Calm down,” she told the children as they arrived at her residence—an apartment in center city she kept bolted from the inside. “It’s late. I want you two in bed by the time I’m finished bathing, okay?” The children, still excited about their night out, nodded and ran to her son’s little bedroom to talk until they needed to pretend to be asleep.

She rolled her eyes, heading the opposite way towards the tiny bathroom. As she did so, she noticed a few lights beginning to flicker. Confused, as she’d replaced them just a few days ago, she tapped them to try and knock them back into life. “I need to upgrade,” she sighed, rolling her eyes once the issue ceased. Pushing it to the back of her mind, she began to ready herself for her shower. However, as she was retrieving a towel, she heard the water begin to run in the tub, stopping her dead in her tracks. Slowly, cautiously, she closed the closet door to lay eyes on the water. It had only been running for a few seconds, but the bath was beginning to overflow. Stricken by panic, she dashed over, trying desperately to pull the plug.

It happened in a blur.

The second she knelt over the tub, a noose—made of wiring from the extension cord in the closet—dropped from the ceiling and strung her up dead.

The water drained itself without a wet spot in sight.

**It takes all of two days for Sam and Dean to pick up the case.**

 

**14 January**

“How long’s it been since we’ve decapitated something, Sammy?” Dean asked, entering the center room of the bunker with a mug of coffee, his body cloaked in a robe and is hair disheveled.

Sam shrugged. “Couldn’t say,” he replied, folding his arms across his chest.

“I’ll tell you—too damn long,” Dean replied, pulling a chair and taking a seat across from his brother. He placed the cup down to his left and leaned over the table, propping his upper bodyweight against his elbows. “Too goddamn long,” he reiterated, sliding his chair inwards, grabbing his mug, and leaning back.

“Hey, I hear you,” Sam agreed. “But it’s been pretty quiet out there, Dean. It happens every now and then. Sometimes there just isn’t work to be done, you know?”

“Not for this long—and not in this line of work. Something’s _always_ stirring up trouble _somewhere_ , Sam. Just gotta look hard enough,” Dean took Sam’s laptop, which was sitting open at the end of the table, and pulled up an article he had found while making his coffee. “Check this one out,” he said, turning the computer around to face his brother.

Sam read over the story, skeptical. “Since when is an isolated suicide our kind of thing, Dean? You know people don’t always kill themselves because of supernatural reasons, right? Sometimes people are just unsteady. It happens.”

“Sure, I get that. But the kids’ stories aren’t lining up. Police think they’re imagining things.”

“Her son is seven, Dean.”

“And her niece is fourteen.”

“And your point? A fourteen-year-old kid is just as capable of exaggerating as a seven-year-old. And besides, neither of them are even witnesses. The report says they just found the body.”

“Sam, I don’t trust Salem, Massachusetts to be radio silent.”

“You’ve never been to Salem, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t you think that’s strange? Basically the witchcraft capital of the country and we’ve never had reason to be there?”

“Sure, but most of those people are frauds. Doubt many people—if any—are pedaling genuine craft. Don’t know what to tell you. Doesn’t sound like our kind of gig.”

“Come on, Sam. This woman’s the third body down since November. Not to mention these sudden suicides have been a pretty regular thing there over the past few decades—maybe centuries, if we could trace it far enough. How does that not strike you as odd?”

“Because, like I said, people kill themselves for multiple reasons.”

“Well, until you got a better place to be, I’ll be packing my shit to go to Massachusetts.” He finished his coffee and got up from his chair. He began to walk towards the kitchen to return the mug, but turned around after noticing his brother hadn’t moved. “You coming or not?”

Sam rolled his eyes, but ultimately he followed. He was up to Dean’s wild goose chase if it meant escaping the bunker—hell, the entirety of Kansas, really—for a little while. He always hated stalls in their work; they made life awful dull, sitting around the bunker waiting for something to strike. And besides, his brother wasn’t delirious—he’d been doing this job for even more time than Sam himself, after all. He trusted his older brother’s gut instinct to be able to determine if something was worth the drive. If Dean thought it was a case, especially when they hadn’t had an honest-to-God case in weeks, then by all means they’d take it as a case unless proven otherwise, contemplation be damned.

Within the hour, they were in the car on their merry way to Massachusetts. And by the time they arrived, Sam would receive a more convincing reason to call it a case.

§§§§§

“We know this is a stressful time, Miss Stoughton,” Sam said lowly, smoothly to their witness, the sister of the victim who brought them to town in the first place.

“Stressful?” she scoffed. “Doesn’t cover it, Agent. But I guess I don’t blame you; aren’t many words out there meant to cover losing a sister and a nephew in a 48-hour period, huh?” she admitted. She wiped at her eyes, took a deep breath, and finally looked up at the brothers, her eyes darting back and forth between them.

“You have the Bureau’s condolences,” Dean told her, shrugging subtly at Sam when his brother raised an eyebrow. “But if you could please tell us what you saw—or what you think you saw.”

“Why?” she asked, straightening her posture. “What’s the FBI doing investigating suicides?”

“How about a deal, Miss Stoughton,” Dean proposed. “You tell us your story, we’ll tell you ours.”

“Alright, fine,” she conceded. She instantly dropped her eye contact, watching her agitation of hands like a crystal ball. “But I doubt it’ll make an ounce of sense to you,” she said with a hint of exceptionally unamused laughter. “The locals ain’t even buying it.”

“I think you’ll find the FBI is a bit more… progressive than local police,” Sam assured. “Just tell us exactly what happened.”

She nodded. “After Josette died, we took in Henry. He’s my late sister’s little boy, it’s the least I could do. Not to mention, he always got along splendid with my Abigail,” she informed, her tone wistful. “It’s hard to tell with a child that young, but it was pretty clear he hadn’t taken his mother’s passing very well—of course, no one expected that of him, naturally, but it does give him a motive, I suppose. I went to pick him up from his school—he was a first grader at the local elementary, had a few really good friends. They must be absolutely gutted.

“Anyway, I pull in to pick him up and he’s crying—full-on red-faced crying. So, of course, I’m concerned. I got out of the car and he’s holding a bloody rock. I ask him what happened and he says—in complete monotone, mind you, ‘I had a reason, Aunt Heidi. Clarissa was a witch. She said her mother taught her to float—her mother taught her witchcraft, Aunt Heidi. So I stoned her to death as punishment for her sins.’

“That struck me—for more than the obvious. I loved that boy so very much, but he was never exceptionally bright. Had a nasty fall when he was maybe four or five, and ever since he’s been a bit slow. No way in hell little Henry would know anything about Witch Trials—or, hell, no way he’d speak to me like that. Not to mention, no one ever saw what he did to Clarissa Danforth coming. She was just five, you see—a kindergartener. And she always got on so well with Henry; the two of them practically grew up together. And now they’re both—

“Regardless, I could tell something was off about Henry, you know? But I took him home and drew him a bath and figured I’d deal with the legalities after he was tucked in. I swear to you, I turned around a minute to grab the bar soap and the next I know he’s strung up in the ceiling. Couldn’t even tell you where the rope came from.”

Sam and Dean looked to one another, then back to Heidi, whose face instantly fell. “You don’t even believe me anymore, do you?” she said, shaking her head. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Sorry to have wasted your time, Agents.”

She was prepared to get up, but Sam reached out and put a hand on her knee. “We definitely believe you, Heidi,” he told her. Easing up, she resumed her seat. “Is there anything else you can tell us about Clarissa or Henry—important or otherwise?”

She stopped for a second to think before nodding. “I mean, Donovan Danforth—Clarissa’s older brother, went postal at a local church. Boy killed 6 people before turning the gun around on himself.”

“Do you have names?” Dean asked, retrieving a pad of paper from the desk in front of him and a pen from within his jacket.

She nodded again. “Felicity and Marcus Gedney, Peter Winthrop, Lucy and Alan Sewall, and Patricia Richards.”

“Thank you, Miss Stoughton.”

“Is that everything then, Agents?”

“Not quite,” Sam said. “We told you we’d tell you our story, so here it is. We, at the Bureau, are opening up a new chapter—top-secret, of course—to snuff out the supernatural. There are a lot of seemingly impossible true stories like yours, Miss Stoughton; this is simply the Bureau’s effort to thoroughly investigate.”

“Federal Ghostbusters?” she scoffed, crossing her arms.

“But you can’t go spreading it, you hear? Truth be told, I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that. What if you didn’t believe me, huh?”

She rolled her eyes at him, but accepted his cover-up nonetheless. “I don’t,” she admitted with a chuckle. “But what do I know? I’m sure whatever your reason _actually_ is, it’s decent. Can’t see the FBI wasting its time and resources sending its boy band members up here from DC.”

“Thank you for your time, Miss Stoughton. And again, condolences from the Bureau,” Dean told her. He got to his feet as she did and put a hand on her shoulder just before she could turn to leave. “And, off the record, keep an eye out—for yourself and your daughter, you hear? We’re not sure what’s happening, but it sure as hell feels like this is working its way through the family. We’d hate to see either of you lose someone else.”

“Thank you, Agent,” she said with a smile, heading on her way.

Dean turned to face his brother, who was now also on his feet. “Seem like a case to you now, Sammy?”

“Really, Dean? You’re using the death of a seven-year-old for your ‘I told you so’ moment?”

“Hey, I take what comes my way.”

§§§§§

Sam, situated at the table in their motel room, took to researching the story Heidi Stoughton had given them. Sure enough, there it was. “Shooting at Salem church: 7 dead, 4 wounded,” he read off to Dean, who was lying on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling.

Dean sighed, sitting himself up. “Great,” he replied with a roll of the eyes. “So we got 10 corpses and 4 almost-corpses. And no clue what’s doing it.”

“Well, I mean, it _is_ Tuesday,” Sam responded with a smirk.

“Very funny,” Dean said. “I’ll tell you what I do know, Sam. 4 wounded—that’s good.”

“How?” Sam scoffed, folding his arms across his chest.

“4 wounded means 4 witnesses. That we can talk to. Without performing a séance or some shit. 4 living, breathing witnesses to talk to.”

“Alright, well, you get on that, then. I’ll hang back, see what I can dig up about the cadavers. Hey—what was it you told Heidi Stoughton? It’s going through families? How do you figure?”

Dean shrugged. “Call it a hunch. Whatever’s going on took out Josette Stoughton _and_ her son? Clarissa Danforth _and_ her brother? Not to mention I’ll bet high money a few of the names she gave us are either parent and child or husband and wife. Seemed like enough of a pattern to say Heidi needs to throw some salt over her shoulder for herself and her daughter.”

Sam nodded slowly, turning to his laptop. “Good thinking,” he said, opening the internet to follow up on his brother’s suspicions. “Think it’s a curse?”

Dean contorted his face. “Nah. If it were a curse, why bounce around between families? You’d think it’d latch itself onto one of them, right? Or at least finish one lineage before moving onto the next one. But unless I misunderstood, Clarissa’s brother died before Josette but Clarissa died after. Doesn’t line up.”

“Damn,” Sam sighed. “I’ll find it—whatever it is. Go talk to those people. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll have noticed changes in Clarissa’s brother before the shooting.”

“Sure thing, Sammy,” Dean replied, grabbing his phone and heading outside.

After his brother was gone, Sam continued his researching, just like he’d promised. Playing off Dean’s hunch, he decided to look into the history of the Stoughton family in Salem. As it stood, a William Stoughton was both Chief Justice and Chief Magistrate during the trials in the late 17th century. Knowing his line of duty, it couldn’t have been coincidental, then, that Stoughtons were beginning to drop dead.

So he looked into the Danforth family. Then the Richards family. The Gedney family. The Winthrops. The Sewalls. Each turned up the same result—someone bearing the name was on the court.

“So a ghost maybe?” he said to himself, now researching the names of every single person who had been executed. “That would explain the hangings and the stoning,” he continued. “A crazy, pissed off spirit of someone who died in vain. Seen it before.”

§§§§§

Dean, still wearing his suit from when they talked to Heidi Stoughton earlier in the day, cleared his throat as he approached the front desk of the hospital. He pulled out his falsified badge, prepared to offer it up to the receptionist.

He looked up to Dean, hearing his nearing footsteps. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said coolly. “Police chief said the feds were in, but I didn’t believe him.”

“If you know who I am, then I assume you know what I came for.”

“Course. Talk to the survivors. Which is grand and all, be my guest. But there’s only one left—the other three are… we’ll call them permanently indisposed.”

“Dead.”

“To put it bluntly.”

Dean sighed, putting his badge back into his jacket. “What happened?”

“It’s a bit bizarre, Agent… Sorry, I never asked for the badge. What’s your name?”

“Lightfoot. Agent Lightfoot.”

“Well, Lightfoot, these suicides don’t sound like your wheelhouse. Hell, don’t sound like _anyone’s_ wheelhouse.”

“Try me.”

“Huland Corwin went first. Crazy son of a bitch kept asking for reading material—wouldn’t stop for a good two weeks. We thought he was just an avid reader, but Jeanie Lowe walked in on the man stacking them on his lungs until he couldn’t breathe anymore.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Alright, yeah. That counts as bizarre.”

“Kendra Hathorne was called maybe half hour later. Woman asked an orderly to draw her a bath and drowned herself in it. And the last of them was Bob Sergeant. Poor man hanged himself overnight.”

“Suicides like this happen often here?” Dean asked with mild bemusement.

“Nope. Not until these three. Kind of freaked the whole hospital to hell and back, if you ask me. But anyway—only witness left is Kathy Dicer, but she’s a bit off the rocker.”

“I’ll take whatever I can, uhm…” Dean examined him for a name tag. “Josh.”

“Whatever you say, Agent.” Josh pointed down the hallway to Dean’s left. “Fourth door on the right,” he directed.

“Thanks,” Dean said, heading on his way.

Upon entering Kathy’s room, Dean was greeted instantly by a fistful of salt to the chest. He raised his eyebrow suspiciously, taking a chair and nodding towards her bed, prompting her to assume a seat on its side cross from him.

“So you’re not a ghost, then” she said calmly. “Good. That’s good. I’m so tired of ghosts, Mister. So damn tired. They don’t stop talking, you know. Just _shout_ —and they say the most awful things. Telling me to kill, people, Mister. Good people, too. People I grew up around. Got histories in this town, too. I mean, I can’t just up and kill Josephine Hale, now can I? Woman’s a _legacy_. Insufferable as the Devil himself, but a legacy nonetheless. Has a family tree in Massachusetts going back to the trial days. Course, things aren’t looking too good in these parts for people like that. Been dropping like flies, it seems. Maybe it’s the ghosts. Think the ghosts could be behind all this, Mister? I think the ghosts are behind it. There are so many of them in this town, Mister. Think they could have formed a cooperative? Like a union? Think they’re out here killing people whose ancestors had a hand in their deaths? I think so. What else could it be? What I don’t understand is why they closed the bullet hole for me. Donovan Danforth shot me dead in the heart, Mister, you know that? Right in the ticker. Boy had good aim. I should have been dead on impact, I think. But here I am—talking, breathing. I think the ghosts did it—because I’m not who they’re after. I think they used poor Donovan as their conduit and took the pawn off the chessboard when they were done with him, that’s what I think. And then, when Corwin, Hathorne, and Sergeant didn’t die from what Donovan did to them, they just did it themselves. I don’t think it was suicide, you know; don’t think _any_ of the recent deaths were suicide. It was the ghosts, Mister. I swear, it had to have been the ghosts. I—what was your name again?”

“It’s not important,” he replied, his eyes wide. “Sorry to have bothered you, Miss Dicer. I’ll be on my way.”

“Watch your back, Mister. Don’t want to end up like any of us have, do you now?”

§§§§§

Just when he was about to call Sam, Dean’s phone rang—an incoming call from his brother. He opened the car door and answered the phone as he slid in behind the wheel. Closing the door, he said, “I think I know what’s on around here.”

“So do I,” Sam replied. “You thinking vengeful spirit?”

“Yeah,” Dean affirmed. “I mean—not unexpected, right? I’m surprised we haven’t heard of a pissed off ghost up here before now.”

“You’re right,” Sam agreed. “I always assumed Salem would be, like, a hotbed for ghost activity.”

“Well, according to the one survivor I… talked to, I guess, it is.”

“I thought there were 4 survivors.”

“There _were_ ,” Dean confirmed, now halfway to their motel. It wasn’t too far a drive from the hospital. “3 of them are dead now—suicide. The woman who’s still alive was… a bit senile, I think. But she kept mentioning all the ghosts around here telling her to kill people—people whose families had a hand in the trials. Do me a favor—look up the history of the Dicer family in Salem.”

“On it,” Sam replied, opening his laptop again. “She happen to give you any names? There’s a _lot_ of people that died unjustly here, Dean. Anyone’s guess who’s doing this.”

“Not a ghost’s name, no. But I’d keep an eye out for any news involving Josephine Hale—hell, _any_ Hales. She did mention her by name. She thinks ghosts are telling her to take Josephine out.”

“Alright,” Sam replied, continuing to search Kathy’s family. “Hey, wait, I got something on the Dicers. They have a history here, but it’s unlike any of the other vics. There was an Elizabeth Dicer accused of witchcraft, but she survived. Nothing about anyone in her line conducting trials or anything.”

“No wonder she’s still kicking, then. Kathy don’t fit the profile.”

“But why would the spirits be contacting her?”

“Who knows? Maybe they think she’s on their side since her ancestor was innocent. Spirits are tricky.”

“Makes sense, I suppose. But I’m not exactly sure how we’re supposed to identify these ghosts. Besides, even if we can, the dead were put in mass graves and scattered about by family members. Those bones could be _anywhere_. Might not even be possible to find them.”

“We’ll figure something out, Sam.”

“If you say so.”

“This place is _full_ of hoodoo witch mojo,” Dean scoffed. “If there’s anywhere we’ll be able to find a secondary way to deal with these sons of bitches, it’s here, right? There’s _got_ to be a real witch somewhere in these parts. And there’s _got_ to be some kind of spell to get the job done. It’s a statistical guarantee, wouldn’t you think? We’ll do it one way or another.”

“Alright, Little Miss Sunshine. In the meantime, I’ll keep digging up some dirt, see what I can find.”

§§§§§

“I still don’t know why the FBI would be interested in these records,” the librarian scoffed, pulling out boxes labelled 1692-1693 and handing them off to the Winchesters. Finally, once they’d taken the last of them, she stood and dusted off her pleated skirt. She looked up to the boys, her eyes going back and forth between the two. “It’s not like there’s a _ghost_ or something around here.”

“What do you mean? Don’t you pedal the company line?” Dean asked, inclining his head.

“Don’t believe in the stuff. Been all over the world, it seems. Can’t say I’ve ever found good evidence. Maybe it’s a local thing. I’ve lived here for… quite some time, but I’m not from these parts. So I don’t know. Perhaps you gotta be raised into those legends.”

“Maybe,” Dean replied with a shrug. “Well, believe me, these records help. It’s classified information, so I can’t give any other details, but it’s definitely useful.”

“Whatever you say, Agents,” she said, pivoting on her heel to leave. Before she could get far, however, she stopped in her tracks. “Call me back over when you’re through with them. Not that I don’t trust the Bureau, but I can’t very well let you go putting them away on your own. Might get it wrong.”

“Sure thing,” Sam assured. With that, she was on her way. Sam turned to his brother, taking the lid off a box. “What exactly are we looking for?”

Dean shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine, Sammy,” he replied. “Anything that sounds helpful, I guess. Burial records would be fan-fricken-tastic, but that’s a little out of the question.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

The two began digging until Sam stumbled across something. “Dean—no wonder we’ve never heard of ghost activity around these parts,” he said. Dean looked up to him, his eyebrows arched. “Someone already came through and burned every last corpse in town.”

Dean pursed his lips, placing the files in his hands back in the box. “So then what’s going _on_?”

“No idea,” Sam sighed. “Well, guess we’re back to square one. Where’d that librarian—oh, here she is! That was… strangely good timing,” he said, his eyes wide when she stepped into the area.

“I was doing some rounds,” she said coolly. “Figured I’d stop in. How’s the search going, Agents? Find everything you need?”

Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he replied. “Sure.”

She gave him a smirk as she began placing the boxes back in their respective places. Standing up to retrieve one, she ran into Dean accidentally. “Oh, dear God—I’m so sorry, Agent,” she said, her voice frantic. “I can be so damn clumsy sometimes.”

Dean had no reply.

§§§§§

The Winchesters had returned to their motel with less of a lead than they’d left with. And a division.

Sam still thought vengeful spirit was a perfectly viable hypothesis. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time they’d seen the ghost of someone whose bones had been burned already. However, Dean was beginning to think it could be something else—perhaps witchcraft. They were, as it stood, _surrounded_ by the stuff; odds would say there had to be someone who legitimately practiced.

“Why would a modern day witch be after these people, Dean?” Sam argued. “It doesn’t line up. No—a spirit’s all it _could_ be.”

“Alright, well, if you’re so smart, tell me what they’re tethered to.”

Sam went silent.

“Exactly my point. No foothold, no remains—no spirit. It’s basic science, Sam. It’s got to be witchcraft.” He was pacing, but stopped as he came to a realization. “That librarian—tell me nothing seemed off about her.”

“Nothing seemed off about her.”

“ _Really_?” Dean scoffed. “How did she know exactly when we were ready?”

“She told you—she was making rounds. Coincidences _can_ happen, you know, Dean.”

“Not to us; not in this line of work.”

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. She seemed like a perfectly fine lady.”

“She ran into me.”

“Right, and?”

“Well, maybe it was intentional.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Right. Sure. Trust nobody.”

“Think about it, Sam. She was definitely shady.”

“You’re crazy.”

Dean opened his mouth to say something back, but found himself incapable. In the time it took Sam to tilt his head, his brother was doubled over, hands clutching his stomach. He backed up until he landed on the bed where he began coughing blood and water profusely onto his lap. “Find—it’s a witch, Sa—find the h-hex—find the bag,” he said, trying to communicate between bouts of coughing.

Sam nodded curtly and began tearing the room apart digging for the hex bag. Apparently his brother was right. He finally found the thing once he cut into the mattress with his knife. Holding it in his hand, he set it ablaze and threw it to the ground. Dean took in a deep breath and spit out what blood remained in his mouth. Gaining his strength back, he glared up at his brother. “Still think it’s not a witch, Sam?”

§§§§§

The instant Dean was up to it (which was about ten minutes after the hex incident), the brothers headed out on a hunt for Sarah Good, their suspect number one. Their first stop was the library, naturally. However, it was somewhat late in the evening, so the place was, of course, closed. As such, it was time for Plan B.

They split up—Sam was dropped at the police station and Dean headed off towards the hospital. The hope was either Sam could find a way to pinpoint where she was or Dean could find her using Kathy Dicer. Neither plan was ideal, and neither plan was a given. But they’d be damned if they didn’t at least give them each a shot.

Sam, at the station, began digging up everything he could on Sarah—starting, of course, by looking for a real name, under the assumption Sarah Good was no more than a pseudo.

“Yeah, of course I know Sarah,” the deputy informed, his eyes wide. “Good gal; keeps her nose clean. Is she in trouble, Agent?”

“More than you could imagine.”

The deputy’s breath began shaking. “Look, Agent. I don’t know what’s going on. But Sarah Good is a citizen of this town—and an upstanding one at that. Unless you can give me some legitimate reasoning here, I can’t just let you do whatever. I don’t know how you run it down in DC, but we like to play by the rules up here.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I need to question her—I _really_ need to question her.”

“Why? She do something?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to _fucking question her_.”

The deputy sighed, his lips pursed. “You can bring her in to question, I guess. But _only_ to question. I don’t want to hear that you laid a God-given hand on that woman, understand? This is already completely out of line for our establishment. Consider it a favor.”

“Great,” Sam replied. “Would you be so kind as to tell me how to reach her.”

The deputy scowled, but picked up a pen from the desk and wrote a phone number on Sam’s hand regardless. “Call that.”

“Thank you, deputy.”

Dean’s search, meanwhile, was equally as eventful. The second he stepped into the hospital, he was greeted by Josh, again, but this time he was different. More reserved, less sociable. As if he’d seen a ghost, even.

“Josh,” Dean greeted coolly.

No reply.

“Josh. It’s Agent Lightfoot. I was here a day or two ago. You told me about the suicides; I talked to Kathy Dicer. I thought we had a connection, here.”

No reply.

Dean, noticing Josh’s glassy expression, waved a hand over his face. No reply, again.

“Damn it,” he sighed. He climbed over the reception desk and slid Josh’s chair out. Sure enough, the man’s pants were drenched in blood. Blood and water. Like at the motel. Dean let out a sigh, pushing the chair back in. He headed rapidly down the hall to find Kathy Dicer, hoping beyond hope that _maybe_ she was lucid.

She was alive, sure, but she was still evidently dazed. However, when he’d met her before, she was docile. Somewhat mental, sure, but docile. As he approached her now, the look in her eyes kept telling him he should be on his way.

“I know who you’re looking for,” she said, her voice even and monotone.

Dean inclined his head. “Can you tell me where to find her, then?”

“Mary says you’re in over your head.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mary says you should be dead by now. Mary says she’s impressed you managed to survive her spellwork.”

“Who’s Mary?”

“Mary says you’re smart. Mary admires that in you. But Mary says you need to learn to watch your back better.”

Before Dean could answer, he felt a searing pain in his left leg that caused him to drop to the floor.

“Mary says it didn’t have to end up this way.”

§§§§§

Sam dialed the number the deputy had given him and, sure enough, a woman picked up the other end.

“What happened? Couldn’t find your way here?” she taunted.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Playing a fun game. Seeing how much I can stack on your brother’s chest before he bites it. They used to _love_ to do executions like this back in the day, you know. Honestly, until just now—no, no, until Huland Corwin, really—I never got the appeal. But I get it now. There’s something so brutally fascinating about it.”

Sam said nothing, but she could hear his angry breath on the other line.

“Oh, calm down, now. There’s plenty for the both of you. I’m not hiding, you know. Wouldn’t have answered the phone if I didn’t want you to come play with me. We’re waiting.”

With that, she hung up. She put the phone down and looked over to Kathy, who was still as expressionless and lifeless as ever. “Kathy, be a dear and go get some more material. Agent Lightfoot and I have a lot to discuss.”

“Mary says she needs more books,” Kathy said aloud before heading out to retrieve some for her.

“ _God_ , she’s so efficient. Should have brought her on earlier,” Mary said to herself. She looked down to Dean with a smirk. “How you doing, there?”

He scowled up to her, but said nothing.

“Thought so. I’ve been trying to figure it out—what did me in? I knew you and your ‘partner’ were hunters the second you came in, but I didn’t expect you to be on my trail so damn soon.”

“Bite me,” Dean breathed.

Mary rolled her eyes. “I have a confession to make—you’ll be dead once Kathy gets back here, so it’s not like it changes much. Would you believe me if I said my name isn’t Sarah Good?”

“Bite me.”

“Yeah, I know. Surprised no one found it out. That name is plastered all over this town; the real girl, poor thing, was executed for witchcraft in my day. Damn shame, too. You know, those bastards were all onto something. Sure, no one that actually _died_ was a witch, but some of us really were. Guess they just didn’t have the right equipment to handle us. But no matter. I’ve gotten great pleasure out of destroying their lineages one bastard kid at a time. Why take so long, you ask? Well, I took a bit of extended leave off in England—in my native town. Fled from Massachusetts after being—albeit accurately—accused my damn self, and finally got around to making it back. And I’d say I waited a damn good amount of time. There are so many descendants nowadays, and I never tire of any of this. Gets more thrilling each time.” There were footsteps down the hall. “That’s probably the other one,” she said coolly.

Sure enough, Sam Winchester walked in, dragging behind him Kathy Dicer’s now dead body. Entering the room, he dropped it to the ground. “Some advice: make your attack dogs stronger next time.”

She smirked, but extended a hand to him. “Mary Bradbury,” she introduced. “Nice to make your acquaintance. But you’re a bit late to story time, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t care.”

“Straight to business kind of guy. I can respect that.”

Sam pulled a gun from his back pocket, at which Mary scoffed. “Come on. You don’t _really_ think that can kill me, do you?”

“One way to find out,” he said, shooting her dead between the eyes. When she dropped to the floor, he leaned over and whispered, “Witch-killing bullets, bitch.”

Finally, he kicked the stack of books off his brother’s chest and hoisted him up. With Sam at the wheel, the brothers drove back to the bunker.


	3. The Gordon House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a lengthier version of the hunt I detail in chapters 4 and 5 of _thirteen_. If you've not read that, this may or may not make 100% sense. Fair warning.

**Picture this.**

“What are you, Katrina? Scared?”

Jason Holmestead and his girlfriend Katrina Dahlke were on their way up to the Gordon House—a local legend in their small New England town of Maryville, New Hampshire. A beautiful, Victorian-style mansion tucked away in the depths of the towns neighboring forest, it had been notorious for decades—as a psych ward in the 1850s, as a harbor for escaped slaves that had made it nearly to Canada in the 1860s, as a slaughterhouse from the 1880s to the 1910s, as a Prohibition Era speakeasy, and as a gateway to Hell from the ‘40s onward. It wasn’t an exceptionally popular destination, but over time it had gotten its fair share of thrill seekers desperate to catch a glimpse of the paranormal. Since 1957, ten people had gone in, and a total three people had come out—all with stories, and all with paranoia. Paranoia that claimed the life of one of the three survivors. So one could say only two actually ever walked away.

It had grown a reputation of sorts as a daredevil’s make-out point ever since Jeanine and Lloyd Crandel had used it as such in the late ‘70s. But still, it was fairly avoided. Everyone in Maryville knew how _that_ story had gone, and only a select few were willing to repeat it.

Consider Jason and Katrina (however reluctantly) as part of that select few.

They were both slightly buzzed as they neared the entrance—a rough but hauntingly elegant pathway up to the house, narrow enough to cut the property off far into the forest from the main road to force intruders to come by way of foot.

“I’m not scared,” Katrina insisted. “I just think this is dumb.”

“That’s exactly why we’re doing it, Kitty-Kat.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ve called you that since second grade. You don’t get to shake it just because we’re adults.”

Katrina rolled her eyes, looking out the window at the dense forest as Jason parked the car as close to the house as the walkway would allow. Taking a glance at her significant other, Katrina noticed Jason smile as he removed the key from the ignition. “Don’t act so disappointed,” she scoffed, popping her door open nearly in sync with him.

“I’ve wanted to explore this place since Lorelai Stevens came back rambling on about ghosts killing her fiancé,” he said, walking toward the path and extending his hand to Katrina.

“Naturally,” Katrina replied, somewhat slowly, taking his hand in hers. “Look, I don’t want to stay long, alright? I’ve got a huge gymnastics competition next week, and I don’t need distracted by paranormal trauma.”

“Come on, Katrina. Everything will be _fine_.”

“Yeah. Lorelai sure sounded fine.”

“So maybe Lorelai was off her rocker. Doesn’t make the place inherently evil, Kat. Critical thinking, please.”

“She wasn’t lying when she said that she _and_ Harold Blowers went in but only she came out.”

“Harry Blowers never went anywhere without enough drugs on him to kill a linebacker. Man probably overdosed.”

“Based on what Lorelai said, I respectfully disagree with that.”

Still, they didn’t turn back. Now at the end of the walkway, Jason reached out and opened the grand front door. It screeched horrifically as it slowly revealed the interior of the house.

“That wasn’t ominous,” Katrina said with a scoff.

“You want to leave? Then stay out here. I won’t be long.”

“Alright, fine. But if you’re in there for more than fifteen minutes, I’m leaving you here.”

Jason shook his head and gave Katrina a quick kiss before heading inside. The instant they were on different sides of the door, it rapidly swung shut. His breath now heavier, Jason reached out to open the door, hearing Katrina pounding on it wildly and yelling his name. The knob turned, but the door refused to budge. “Kat,” he called back to her. “Kat—the door won’t open.”

“I don’t like this Jason. Get out of there _now_.”

“I have to get to another door, Kat.”

“Jason, don’t get dead.”

“Not planning on it.”

The inhabitants of the Gordon House, however, had conflicting plans to Jason’s. And, as they outnumbered him, it was much easier for them to get their way than it was for him. As Jason went deeper into the house in search of a backway out, he felt the temperature dropping until suddenly he felt nothing but a piercing pain through his torso. In his last moments, he looked to his chest and saw a bluish-grey hand pull itself out of him.

As Jason’s body hit the floor, the door slowly opened itself, allowing Katrina to see inside—sort of. It was too dark to make much out, but, as Jason hadn’t gotten too far, she could see his body’s silhouette on the ground and, against her better judgement, ran in to check on him.

This invited her to the same fate he’d met, and the two were reported missing a few days later.

**Sam and Dean Winchester assumed the hunt five days after their reported disappearances.**

§§§§§ 

**May 30**

Sam and Dean were pacing the bunker’s library, uncertain what their next move should be. They had brought home their little Nephilim just shy of two weeks back, and so far he hadn’t been good for much but giving the brothers something to argue about—sometimes they’d still bicker about whether or not to keep him around, but most of the time was spent on petty feuds over technicalities.

“Here’s a thought,” Dean said. “If we’re going to harbor the son of _Satan_ , don’t you think we need to up the security?”

“Sure, yeah. I figured you’d already powered the demon warding up again. Crowley’s dead, so we don’t have any use for it being down,” Sam replied.

“It’s already back up,” Dean assured. “But what about the angels? Heaven’s got to have a target on the kid’s back.”

“Yeah. Which is why I installed some angel-proofing after we got back from North Cove.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. It’s not like we need to let Cas back in, you know? Like how it is with the demons—no need for it to be down, so it’s up. That said, it’s a little… lax. Jack’s got grace in him, so I wasn’t exactly sure how he’d take to angel warding, you know?”

“Fair enough.”

“In the meantime, how about a hunt?”

“Excuse me?”

“A hunt, Dean. As in our job. Maryville, New Hampshire. Apparently there’s some Paranormal Activity going on in a place called the ‘Gordon House.’ Screams ghost to me—a lowball, Dean. Case basically comes with training wheels.”

“We’re a little busy, don’t you think?”

“So he can come.”

“Sam, I’m not babysitting Lucifer, Jr. on a ghost hunt.”

“Good thing he can—sort of—handle himself.”

“You want to hunt? We can hunt. But the kid stays back.”

“Great. Yeah, let’s just leave him here for the angels. Or the demons. Or someone worse. Sounds good.”

“Did we not just establish that the bunker is warded? He’s fine.”

“You trust the warding by itself? To hide a Nephilim? Kid’s insanely powerful, Dean. For all we know, he isn’t cloaked at all. Maybe he’s a beacon just on principle.”

“Sam, I’m not bringing Lucifer’s son on a hunt.”

They heard a stirring in down the hallway; Jack had just woken up—he’d been out for only an hour or two, but that was his average. Well-rested and somewhat energized, he entered the library, interrupting the Winchesters’ conversation.

“Here’s a thought,” Sam said, still addressing his brother, though his tone had gone from irritable to arrogant. “Why don’t we ask him what _he_ thinks?”

“Because I don’t care,” Dean replied dryly.

Halfway through Dean’s thought, however, Sam had already turned to the Nephilim and asked, “Jack, what would you say to a…n adventure?” He drew out the ‘a’ in ‘an’ as he looked for the wording he sought.

“Adventure?” repeated Jack, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. “Of what sort?”

“The staying home and out of trouble sort,” Dean all-but snarled.

Sam gently pushed his brother’s shoulder. “Ignore him. He’s being an ass. Anyway, Dean and I are headed up to New Hampshire if you’d like to tag along.”

“Sounds pleasant,” Jack replied with a shrug.

“Well, there we go,” Sam exclaimed, satisfied with the response. Dean did nothing more than roll his eyes and walk out of the room—an improvement on his usual attitude.

§§§§§

New Hampshire was a good ways away from Kansas. However, Dean kept the radio up, and the trio occasionally managed some small talk, and the time to get into Maryville, way up by the Canadian border, seemed to go by in seconds. A relief from the tension that had plagued them before their departure.

That said, entering Maryville meant actively beginning the hunt, and, as was protocol, Dean’s attitude shifted, and he became more focused on their job—and, more importantly, their Nephilim. Despite not acting hostile during the ride north, Dean’s position was unchanged.

As they drove through town, they talked over Jack’s role in the ordeal. There were three distinct sides: Jack’s, asserting he should be utilized to his full potential, whatever that should imply; Sam’s, positing that Jack, being a variable, should be subdued slightly but still allowed participation; and Dean’s, avowing, emphatically and predictably so, that Jack should never have come in the first place.

“He should have stayed home, Sam,” Dean said. “We should have left him there.”

“So you said. Four times,” Sam sighed. “But he’s here. And besides, we’re already in New Hampshire. Not like we can just turn back now.”

“I bet the little bastard could teleport his half-feathered ass to Kansas,” Dean asserted.

“Yeah, maybe. If he knew how.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “It’s not my fault he’s having system malfunctions. But hey—maybe that’s a good thing.”

“Why do you say that?” Jack interjected. “Would I not be more useful to you at full power?”

“If you had control over them, possibly. And if I trusted you.”

“I do not want to harm anyone, Dean,” Jack insisted. “You have my motives wrong.”

“Oh, honey, I knew your father. I have your motives just fine.”

“You understand _Lucifer’s_ motives, and perhaps what he would have wanted mine to be. You do not, however, actually comprehend mine.”

“So philosophical,” Dean taunted. “Jack, decades doing this job has taught me one valuable lesson: to trust my gut. And right now my gut says Satan’s spawn is not a positive.”

“Your instinct is flawed.”

“I’d trust my instinct over your word, flawed or otherwise.”

“You are too obstinate, Dean Winchester. I am simpler than you think. I wish no one harm; I just want to rescue my father.”

“See, now that’s where we have a problem.”

“No—not Lucifer. He is nothing but blood to me. I want to rescue my _father_ , Castiel.”

“Dead angels don’t have a habit of resurrecting.”

“Dean, we’ve been over this. Cas has literally come back from the dead at least five times since we met him,” Sam added.

“Yeah, well, we didn’t burn his remains then, either.”

“And I told you not to this time, but you went ahead and did it anyway.”

“Right. Because every time God or Chuck or whatever the hell he goes by now decided he wanted to bring Cas back, he was pretty fucking quick about it. If he cared enough to bring him back this time, he’d have done something about it by now—before we had the chance to burn his bones.”

“Whatever you say, Dean. We’re not here because of Jack anyway. Ghost hunt, remember?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I remember.”

“Ghost hunt?” Jack asked, his eyes wide.

“Absolutely not,” Dean said, firm. “Even if I thought you weren’t going to screw the planet, you look way too young. You’d get all of us arrested, and the job would never get done. You’re staying back, end of story.”

“What _can_ I do, then?” he asked, sitting straighter. “I want to help.”

“I’m sure you do,” Dean responded flippantly.

“You’re too dismissive, Dean,” Sam criticized.

“And you’re too trusting. Looks like we’re both flawed.”

Sam rolled his eyes. Ignoring his brother, save for that initial reaction, he turned back to Jack. “Look, I’m sure there’s something for you,” he said coolly. “I just don’t know what. Dean’s got a point here—until we figure out everything about you and your powers, it’s too much of a wildcard right now to just throw you out into a hunt and assume it’ll go fine. _But_ , we can start you off easy, what do you say? Nothing too… demanding. We need to identify all the names of the people that have died there and find their graves—which you can help with, obviously. That’s just research. And after that, we need to torch the bones. When we start doing that, odds are, things will get ugly inside. One of us will take the House, and you can help the other burn remains. Sound like a plan?”

Jack nodded.

“Then it’s settled,” Sam affirmed, looking back at Dean. “He’s helping—it’s two to one. Democracy in action.”

If he hadn’t been driving, Dean’s head would have been in his hands the second Sam offered Jack a task. But, seeing as there was progressively less he could do to stop them, he sighed and caved. “Fine. The kid can burn some bones. But that’s _it_. I don’t want him getting too involved or getting ideas _or_ getting his hands dirty. God knows what happens if he decides causing death is fun.”

“Ever the optimist,” Sam sneered.

Dean smirked as he pulled into a space out front of the first motel in town, the Royal Jane Inn.

§§§§§

Jack was thoroughly entertained by the idea of “research.” Though he held the physique of a young adult, he still was but an infant, and, thusly so, was curious about everything the world had answers to—and even more so things it did not.

Dean was off on his own, sitting on his bed and focusing solely on his laptop, ignoring Sam and Jack the best he could. Across the room, the pair sat at a circular table, Jack leaning inwards slightly to allow him to see the screen, and shared Sam’s laptop, where Sam was teaching Jack just how exactly to find information with such a device.

“What I’m doing now is hacking into local police servers,” Sam explained. “I’m looking for some information on people who would have passed away in that house.” He looked up at Jack to make sure the kid was still following. Seeing him eyeing the screen intently, Sam continued. “Dean’s, so you know, looking for the names of all the couples that have vanished over the last few years. Since we’re not sure what’s going on, it’s possible some of those people could still be alive.”

“Okay,” Jack said with a nod. “So then what happens?”

“Depends on what Dean finds. If there are witnesses, we break out the suits and interview them. If not, we keep looking online for where the remains of the spirits are.”

“There is someone alive, by the way,” Dean said. “Jeanine and Lloyd Crandel. Both fifty-seven. They live a couple miles outside of town.”

“Great,” Sam responded. He stood up, and Jack followed his lead. “I’ll go get the suits, and we’ll go talk to them.”

“I got it, Sam,” Dean assured. “You and Damien keep playing detective.”

“My name is Jack.”

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please,” Dean scoffed. “I’ll take it, Sam.”

Sam sighed. “Fine,” he conceded. He turned back to his laptop and sat down, as did Jack. “Let’s keep digging, then,” he said.

They found a total of nine names, looking as far back in time as the database allowed. “What now?” Jack asked, his mind whirring with wonder.

“We wait for Dean to get back, see what he found out, and then we go deal with this thing,” Sam replied coolly.

It hadn’t taken them too terribly long to search the entirety of the database—given its data only went so far back as 1957, so they had a decently long wait until Dean returned. The Crandels, as it turned out, were exceptionally talkative, so they kept him a good while longer than he’d wanted.

He arrived at their house a few miles outside of town, adjusting his tie and slipping his trusty fabricated FBI badge into his suit pocket. Straightening his posture, he knocked on the door, greeted by a bubbly middle-aged woman who gave him a toothy grin.

“And who are you?” she asked, though not aloofly—more inquisitive, excited. As if she were a young child.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Dean greeted, his voice steady and professional. He reached for his badge as a man approached the door.

“Who’s there, Jean?” he asked. His tone was less inviting than hers, but it was not off-putting.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Dean addressed. The man raised an eyebrow as Dean displayed the badge for them. “My name is Agent Page, and I’m here on account of two recent disappearances in Maryville. I wonder if you’d let me in to go through a few questions?”

The woman opened the door the rest of the way and gestured into their house. “Of course,” she obliged. “Come right in.”

Dean nodded as his show of gratitude, and the Crandels lead him to their front room, where they all assumed seats around a coffee table.

“Would you like something to drink, Mr. Page?” Jeanine asked him. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”

“No thank you, ma’am.”

“Please—Jeanine.”

“No thank you, Jeanine.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, adjusting her position to be more comfortable knowing she needn’t get up. “You said this is about Maryville? That tiny backwoods place up north?”

“That it is.”

“God, we haven’t been to Maryville since…” Jeanine paused as she searched for the date. “Must be about forty years now.”

“Right,” Dean said with a curt nod. “When you were ‘kidnapped by the residents of 1754 Cherryhome Drive,’” he added for her, quoting what had been Lloyd’s statement in the article.

“Exactly,” she confirmed. “We won’t be forgetting that anytime soon.”

“But why is the FBI looking into this now?” Lloyd interjected. “That was forty years ago. Those people would be in their nineties at the youngest. Hell, the local police closed the investigation.”

“You must not keep up with the news in Maryville,” Dean replied. “More couples have gone missing. It’s beginning to look cyclic, and the FBI decided it’s become… our jurisdiction.”

“Oh, God,” Jeanine gasped. “Well, whatever you need to know, Agent. It’s our honor to help a federal investigation.”

“And it’s our civil duty to help anyone that’s in danger there,” Lloyd added. “I hate to think of someone else having our experience.”

“Right, well, your compliance is appreciated,” Dean said, stiff. “But would you care to elaborate on that experience for me?”

“Of course,” she said. She looked to her husband, his cue to initiate.

“Way, way back in… what year was that, Jeanie?” Lloyd began.

“It was ’77, Lloyd.”

“Right, that’s right. Well, Jeanie and I were both seventeen, and we had one summer left before we graduated. And we wanted to make it exciting.”

“And we decided the best way to do that was to act indecently in public.”

“Exactly. But, you see, we didn’t have the balls to do anything somewhere _really_ public, so we were at kind of an impasse.”

“Except, a good friend of mine—Dorothy Kilbourne—suggested that Gordon House. Said she, Lloyd, myself, and Jonathan Carmichael—her boyfriend way back when—should go as a group.”

In honesty, Dean had tuned out most of what they were saying by this point, finding it hard to focus with their back-and-forth style of narration.

“Right—that run-down old house on Cherryhome. Been abandoned for years—no one was going to catch us there. So, we go, the four of us. Except the second Johnny and Didi see that broken pathway up to the front door, they bail. Too intimidating for them.”

“But we still wanted to go in, so the group split up. Jonathan and Dorothy stayed back, and we made our ways up the pathway. Correct me if I’m wrong, Lloyd, but did you feel the temperature dropping the closer we got?”

Lloyd nodded. “For sure.”

Dean was intrigued.

“Anyway,” Lloyd said, putting the story back on the rails. “We go into this place, and the front door slams itself shut behind us like it’s got a mind of its own. Naturally, we try and get it open, but it won’t budge. So we’re trapped here inside this abandoned house with nothing to do and no one else close enough to hear us.”

“We’ll spare the details of what _exactly_ we did… It’s rather impure. But the second we come back to our senses and decide to try the door again, that’s when _they_ showed up.”

“Look, if we had known that old slaughterhouse was _inhabited_ , we wouldn’t have gone. So this put us in a right awkward position. These guys—there were two of them, both balding old men—were not excited for us to be there.”

“In the time it takes us to turn back to the door, we’re each being restrained by these two. And then I watched the one give Lloyd a nice one to the head and the other guy does the same to me.”

“And a few hours later, Jeanie and I wake up in the basement. And it’s a horror show down there, I’ll have you know. These men don’t just have a basement like you or I, Mr. Page. No, they got themselves a basement full of corpses—all of them with name tags.”

Dean inclined his chin. That could be of use to Sam.

“Anyway, I don’t want to go into much other detail, if it’s fine by you, Agent Page,” Jeanine said with a sigh. “We were locked up in there for probably four days, and those men were… well, I didn’t know humans could _be_ so awful to one another.”

“You’ve said plenty, Mrs. Crandel,” Dean assured her.

“Jeanine.”

“You’ve said plenty, Jeanine.” Dean rose to his feet, and the couple followed his lead. He added, “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Well, if you need anything else, Mr. Page, don’t hesitate to come back here,” Lloyd replied.

“Will do, Mr. Crandel.”

“Lloyd.”

“Will do, Lloyd.”

Dean nodded to each as his salutation, and, after receiving from Lloyd a firm handshake and from Jeanine an (unwelcome) embrace, he showed himself out of their home.

§§§§§

Jack and Sam had, in Dean’s absence, turned the TV on and made some low-quality microwave popcorn they’d picked up at the grocery store down the road. They’d been channel-surfing to some degree, but when Dean walked in they were both fixated on an old episode of “The Twilight Zone,” a show that, despite acclaim, had always rubbed him the wrong way. Dean had never been a fan of entertainment centered on his work—especially when the narrative was driven by misconception.

“Alright,” he said, putting his luggage down. “Off your asses. I got everything.”

Sam inclined his head. “Really?”

Dean nodded curtly. “Lloyd’s description was vivid.”

“Where are the bodies?”

“In the basement. Naturally.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Naturally,” he sighed. He had rather hoped the corpses would be outside the House, so they could get Jack involved without him being in the thick of things.

“So—you had a game plan, did you not?”

“Not really,” Sam scoffed. “I had maybe the beginning of one.”

“Kid burns some bodies; we kick some ghosts’ asses. Sounds like a game plan to me.”

And, because they hadn’t a better option, that’s what they went with. Sure, Sam’s original plan was for one of the brothers to hang back and lend Jack a hand, but they decided it was unnecessary considering both his chaperones would be in the same exact house as he would. Instead, they would get him downstairs, where he was to uncover the remains and set them ablaze while Sam and Dean took care of anyone that tried to get in their ways.

They departed from the Royal Jane two minutes to midnight, taking winding dirt roads as opposed to the straight-shot through town center. The street was lined on either side with dense forest, as was the Gordon House, which sat squarely at the end of a path through the trees where a small clearing had been made to allow for the House and its yards. It seemed to be shrouded in perpetual silver fog.

Pulling the Impala up as far down as the path would allow, before getting too narrow, they arrived at their destination. Dean cleared his throat as he put the car in park and opened his door, followed shortly by Sam and Jack. He nudged Jack’s door shut slightly as he passed it, not feeling inclined to step out of its way, and opened the trunk.

Jack had never seen what it was, precisely, that Sam and Dean lugged around in their massive trunk everywhere they went, so when Dean revealed it, he tensed himself. It was a right arsenal—firearms, biblical weapons in spades, blades, lions, and tigers, and bears (oh, my).

He said nothing, standing back and watching as Sam and Dean retrieved, for themselves, shotguns and, for Jack, a lighter, a container full of salt, and a canister of gasoline. Sam handed the items off to Jack who took them, but slowly.

“You have the easy part,” Dean said once Sam had stepped back. “Douse the bones in gas, cover them in salt, and light them up. Ain’t rocket science. Capisce?”

Jack nodded and, trying to make himself tougher, raised his chin and his posture. Despite adding a good inch to his height in doing so, he still barely reached Dean’s neck. As such, Dean patted his head and gave him a condescending, “Nice try, kid,” before nodding to Sam and heading off towards the House.

Sam hung back, engaging Jack in conversation on the trek up the path.

“What are you going to do while I burn the bodies?” Jack asked, curiously eyeing Sam’s weapon.

“Distract,” Sam replied curtly. “Keep the ghosts from finding you.”

“And a shotgun can do that?”

“Not usually,” Sam said with a small laugh.

Jack narrowed his eyes, which asked his question for him.

“These ones can. They’re full of rock salt.”

Jack looked at the rock salt he was carrying. “And that works?”

“That and iron. It’s like their kryptonite.”

Jack had no reply but visible confusion.

Sam scoffed, though not to patronize. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s their weakness.”

Jack nodded.

Dean, who had gotten to the door much quicker than Jack and Sam, stood in wait, his arms crossed and his foot tapping impatiently on the deck. “Any day now,” he called to them when they were in his sights.

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Dean’s getting antsy,” he scoffed. “Better pick up the pace a little.”

Jack nodded, again, and they both broke into light jogs that got them to Dean in no time at all. “About time,” Dean teased. With the gang back together, Dean tightened his muscles and turned to the door, placing a hand on the knob. “Let’s go kick it in the ass,” he said before, dramatically, kicking the door open so hard it swung back and loudly slammed into the wall. He grinned self-satisfactorily, inclining his chin. “Think we got their attention?” he asked his brother.

Sam rolled his eyes and ignored Dean’s charades, instead gesturing to the door with his head and gently pushing his brother inside. Jack followed a few feet behind them.

In the center of the foyer, two dusty nametags labelled _Katrina Dahlke_ and _Jason Holmestead_ lay next to one another. There were two trails in the grime on the floor that, presumably, lead to the basement—where the rest of the bodies had been stashed over time. Dean pursed his lips as he looked at them. “There’s our missing persons,” he said lowly. He sighed and looked around the room as the temperature began to drop. “Better get going.”

Sam nodded and turned to Jack, preparing his firearm as he spoke. “Get to the basement; if anything happens down there, get out and find us. _Don’t_ do anything stupid, and don’t try to play the hero,” he said. “We have everything under control; if everything goes accordingly, they won’t be after you.”

And so the trio split off. Or, rather Jack split off, as Sam and Dean remained in the foyer. Almost immediately after they no longer had Jack in their sights, the brothers were greeted by two older men—exactly like Lloyd and Jeanine had said there would be. They were easy enough to fend off; fire some rock salt here or there and they’d dissipate. The boys were almost growing complacent upstairs.

Down in the basement, Jack was rapidly digging for the bodies Lloyd had sworn were there. He was beginning to get disheartened, finding no trace of them. However, as he was prepared to give up, a wall crashed down behind him. Sam and Dean ought to have heard, except, at roughly the same time, things got more complicated on their turf. As was expected, given there were more than two corpses in the Gordon House, it didn’t take long to find more than two spirits. Eventually, they were firing nearly non-stop as ghosts came from all angles. An entire shelf collapsed when the pair shot in its direction simultaneously, shattering tens of ceramic teacups that sent shards every which way—hence their obliviousness toward the sounds downstairs. A spirit, that of Katrina Dahlke, incidentally, thrust the windows open, allowing strong New England winds to pull debris in from the outside. It was a mess of loud noises and visual clutter in the upstairs, but they managed to keep everything generally under control—as on lock as such a situation could be.

Jack approached the rubble hesitantly, stopping dead in his tracks as he noticed the cavity the wall had been hiding was filled to the brim with human remains—all labelled with nametags, as Dean had said they would be sometime along the drive there. He took in a deep breath as he advanced. Pausing to look them over for a hot second, he stood in front of the bodies. His repose was interrupted when he heard calamity upstairs (Sam and Dean had been thrown to opposite walls), which told him his timeframe was narrowing. He cleared his throat and, just like Dean had instructed, began to throw gasoline and rock salt over the bones en masse. He pulled the lighter from his back pocket, but he struggled to produce a flame. He’d never been taught to use a lighter, so the technology was foreign. Still, even when he’d figured out how it should work, he couldn’t get anything stable going. He could hear Sam and Dean’s battle upstairs, including the pair calling down to him to hurry his ass up. So, fruitlessly, he continued trying to ignite the fire.

Upstairs, Katrina’s distorted spirit plunged her talon-like nails into Dean’s shoulder. Jack could hear the agony from downstairs, so he pressed on trying to work the lighter, though with more haste, feeling his blood boil. A moment later, Katrina’s counterpart—the ghost of a young man, but not of Jason Holmestead—wrapped his hands around Sam’s throat, letting out an earsplitting cry of victory as the Winchester fought to escape. He let go, watching triumphantly as Sam fell to the floor.

Jack heard the thud of Sam’s body and, now infinitely more scared and angry, unaware of what precisely was happening upstairs, tried harder still to produce a steady flame. However, as he was about to strike it again, he paused, sensing heat from before him. A fire had lit—on its own, it would appear—and Jack could hear the screams from upstairs as the ghosts began to burn away.

Dean and Sam, panting but alive, looked at each other once the ghosts had gone. “Son of a bitch,” Dean said. “Little bastard came through.”

“Don’t know why you expected otherwise,” Sam replied, utilizing the wall to get himself to his feet. He eyed Dean’s shoulder, which was bleeding profusely. Though he was still out of breath, he was far more concerned about treating Dean’s wound. He called down to Jack to get the kid to come upstairs and sat himself and his brother down on the ground.

Jack arrived upstairs, staring at his hands in awe. Still, seeing Sam and Dean still breathing, he felt his heartrate slow. “Did it work?” he asked. He looked up to Sam and Dean and noticed the blood. “Is he okay, Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Dean insisted.

“He’ll live,” Sam assured. “We just need to close the wound. There’s some dental floss and needles in the car. Would you mind getting them?”

“Sam, I need you to know something.”

“It can wait, Jack. Whatever it is, I’ll listen, but first we need to suture this.”

“Let me try,” Jack said, walking briskly to the brothers and kneeling before them. He kept eye contact with Sam as he extended his left arm and held his hand over Dean’s shoulder. As he closed his fingers into a fist, the brothers noticed the punctures closing with them. Once the wound was healed, he sat back and pulled the lighter from his pocket. “I could not get it to light,” he admitted, handing it off to Dean as he sat up.

“You did _something_ ,” Dean scoffed, taking his lighter. “They burned.”

“I burned their remains.”

“Without the lighter.”

Jack nodded once. “Yes. I heard what was happening upstairs and—suddenly the bodies were on fire.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Sam raised his eyebrow as he looked back to the Nephilim. “Do you know how?”

“No.”

“Fantastic,” Dean commented. “I vote we get back to the bunker before the kid figures it out and lights the rest of Maryville on fire.”

“Cut him some slack,” Sam commanded. “He just saved both of our lives _and_ fixed your shoulder. I think he’s earned some respect.”

“Sure,” Dean replied coldly, getting to his feet and walking out the door without a word of gratitude even crossing his mind.

Sam and Jack rose to their feet together and followed Dean out the door around thirty seconds later. Sam never took his eyes off Jack.

There was quite a bit to talk about from there.


	4. Knocking on Heaven's Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an expansion on chapters 10 and 11 of _fourteen_ , and, unless you've read that, I can say with certainty some things won't click for you. Fair warning.

**Picture this.**

“But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.”

A priest declares what he claims are his biblical truths from the pulpit, his voice excited and loud, progressively more passionate with each word—up until “angels,” where it drops to a quiet, serene, and almost entranced sounding whisper.

“He’s an actor,” a man in the pews scoffs, shaking his head. “Anyone could do what that man does.”

“Give him a chance,” the woman beside him pleads, tugging his shirt sleeve. “Pastor Gregory is truly one with the Scripture. He speaks to the angels—a pipeline to God! Open your heart to him.”

“He’s a fraud. I don’t intend to open my heart to deceit, Beverly.”

“I choose to open _my_ heart to him, Peter. Everyone else in this temple to the Lord does as well. Hear his message; I implore you. It is one of love, not one of deception.”

“Brainwashing,” Peter insists, rolling his eyes. He makes to stand up, but he is pulled back down into his seat by the man on his other side. “Excuse me, sir.”

“Stay,” the man commands, his voice low—more intimidating than old lady Beverly. “Enjoy the word. Listen to the angels, Peter. Hell is awaiting you at the end of your current path, young man.”

Peter sighs impatiently. “Look,” he says shortly, inclining his head but staying in his seat in the pew nonetheless. “You’re welcome to your fantasies. I, however, would like to be on my way. I have a mortal life to worry about, and, unlike yourself, I know it’s the only one I’ve got. Good day, sir.” Again, Peter tries to stand, but the man’s grip on his arm tightens. It’s like a vice, and Peter begins to grow increasingly certain that the hold is not humanly possible. The man had to have been over seventy; he should not be capable of such immeasurable strength. With wide eyes and furrowed brows, he looks into the old man’s eyes, which flicker to pure black for a second before blinking back to their default hazel. “What the _hell_ , old man?” Peter exclaims. The man’s grip tightens.

“Enjoy the sermon, Peter,” Beverly insists. She takes Peter’s hand and watches the pulpit enthusiastically. “Accept the angels into your body.”

Thunder strikes outside, but the congregation is largely unfazed. Phones begin to alert them that their precious town of American Falls is under a severe weather warning. Not the county, just their township. Undeterred, their pastor continues his yelling, back to his street-preacher-esque volume and intensity. He pauses, his mouth curled into an ecstatic grin. “I can hear the angels—they’re on their way here _now_.”

“This is ridiculous,” Peter growls. However, as the man to his left makes his bones shiver, he decides to remain in his pew until the end of the sermon.

Cheers erupt as the lights begin to blow out around them, plunging the Saturday evening service into pitch dark. Peter looks around frantically, curious why no one seems to be reacting in fear as he was. Surely this was not a typical church proceeding. The glass windows start to shatter one after another, and the winds outside drop the temperature considerably. Peter changes his mind and tries to get to his feet, but he finds himself incapable of leaving. Terrified for his life while the churchgoers around him are praising the Lord for what they saw as the imminent descent of His angels, he leans forward and clutches his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.

Moments later, he hears a piercing noise, like a dog whistle. Once it stops, it is followed immediately by screams from the men and women around him. Sometime during the confusion, Peter feels the old man lose his grip. Before long, everything is over. He takes a look around him. No one but he and the priest appears to be breathing. To be certain, he taps the old man on his left—no response. He shakes old lady Beverly. No response. The only answer he gets is from the pastor down in the pulpit.

“That could have gone better.”

**Sam and Dean, incidentally, would arrive in town not a day later, following some good intel.**

§§§§§

**December 13**

Dean had himself posted defensively in the front room of the bunker, holding a rifle to his chest. His brother held his back, posed the same way. They had both heard the door, and, at 4:20 in the morning especially, it wasn’t something they _should_ have heard. However, they’d been unsuccessful finding the intruder, and thusly they’d decided to stand and wait.

Two pairs of footsteps down the hall caused the brothers to tense, looking around their shoulders to one another and tightening their grips on their respective firearms. The second the door opened, Dean had a bullet in the air.

“What the _hell_?” their guest exclaimed. She was accompanied by Castiel.

Dean rolled his eyes, putting the weapon down. “Farrah,” he sighed upon recognizing her. “Your timing is incredible.”

Sam, too, relaxed himself, laying the firearm on the floor. The four made their ways to the table and assumed seats around it. Farrah looked around the group with an arched eyebrow. “Good morning, boys,” she purred with a smirk. “Is it customary to greet guests with weapons on this side of the fence?” she teased.

“No,” Dean admitted. “Though it’s customary to not show up at someone’s place at 4am without warning.”

“Noted,” Farrah scoffed. “How the hell have you lot been? It’s been a few weeks.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “The usual. Why are you here, Farrah?”

“Ever the conversationalist.”

“You came at a bad time.”

“Noted,” she repeated. “I think I found something up your alley. I was going to check it out myself, but I didn’t want to go without back-up.”

“Carry on.”

“Church congregations have been… explosive as of late out in the west.”

“Explosive?”

“The people are vaporizing. And the ones who aren’t are found dead at their homes shortly after. On principle, I’m wary of massacres at churches like this; usually it’s a sign of something bloody going on upstairs. Hence my desire for back-up.”

“Do you have any idea what we could be walking into?” Dean said, now interested. He’d been itching for a hunt, though it hadn’t been too terribly long since he and his brother had taken down a wolf pack up in Minnesota. He leaned forward, propping his elbows up on the table.

“A hunch. I know for sure angels are searching for vessels. They’re still hellbent on tracking down your little celestial power generator, wherever he is. It’s been all over radio since we got onto this side of the rift; when that level of celestial energy comes and goes, angels feel it. My guess is they’re finding bad matches—host can’t contain the angel and, well, nothing good happens from there. But I’m concerned because the people walking out of those churches are either witnesses or they’re vessels, and they’re still dying. Witnesses, sure, they’re only human; angels don’t like loose ends. But successful vessels shouldn’t be dropping. It’s suspicious.”

“Got any locations?”

Farrah nodded. “West Wendover, Nevada, was the first I’d heard of, though after looking into it I found there had been one in Scottsdale, Arizona, a few days before. After that was Murphys, California, and, most recently, Salt Lake City.”

“That’s… hard to track.”

“Going where the angels go, I’m assuming.”

“We’ll help you chase this down,” Castiel assured her, breaking his silence. “But where do you figure we start?”

“You must not pay attention to angel radio,” Farrah replied, shaking her head. “We start in American Falls, Idaho.”

§§§§§

Farrah and Castiel beat Sam and Dean to American Falls by a lot, as Farrah had insisted on flying and Dean had insisted on driving. As a compromise, Farrah flew (and took Castiel with her) while the Winchesters climbed into the Impala and drove.

As it was, the angels were early enough that the church was still tranquil. Hell, they were around to witness Peter and Beverly enter the damn thing.

“So I understand why angels would be flocking to mass services like this,” Castiel remarked as the two made their ways discreetly inside. “But I don’t understand… anything else.”

“That puts us on the same page then, C,” Farrah sighed. They stood far back in the wings; it was doubtful the patrons even noticed they’d come.

Castiel rolled his eyes, watching the events with folded arms. “So… what are we looking for then?” he asked her.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“That many angels coming to Earth should create some chaos.”

“Right. But we don’t _need_ signs of angelic descent, remember? We need signs of… well, I don’t know. Something else.”

“So we’re looking for a sign.”

“A sign of something other than celestials.”

“So pretty much anything.”

“Exactly.”

As the sermon was nearing the climax, the angels clutched their heads as they were simultaneously struck with angelic communication. _Commence descent_ , it said. Their brethren were coming, meaning their time was narrowing.

Farrah’s keen eye noticed the bizarre interactions between Peter and the old man. She nudged Castiel and gestured toward the pair with her head. He watched with narrowed eyes. “Think he’s a suspect?” she asked.

Castiel nodded, and, almost immediately after, the storm outside started. “That’s our cue,” Castiel insisted. “I don’t feel up to watching all these people die, and we can’t exactly stop the will of Heaven under such a time constraint, but I’m sure we can at least minimize the catastrophe.”

Farrah replied coldly. “I need to see where this leads.”

“You’d watch these people suffer and do nothing about it?”

Farrah nodded. “Greater good, Castiel. I don’t like it, but if we can figure out what’s up, it might save God knows how many other towns.”

Castiel sighed, but he didn’t protest. Instead, he simply walked outside and waited, cringing at the sounds of the screaming inside.

Farrah came out unaccompanied after the chaos died down. She’d been quick; Peter and Pastor Gregory were still inside by the time she reached Castiel. “Two survivors,” she informed. “Though, oddly enough, no vessels. The pastor lives, and one man lives, but without a parasite. I assume he rejected the angels. Smart man,” she remarked callously. “Guess we have our two first stops, yeah? The preacher and the infidel?”

Castiel nodded, though still wary of Farrah’s behavior.

“Sam and Dean should be turning up rather shortly,” Farrah said, noting the setting sun to their west. “Go meet up with them, why don’t you? I’ll take another look inside.”

“There’s hardly an _inside_.”

“Sure there is. there are walls.”

Castiel rolled his eyes, but he listened to her suggestion and headed to the motel.

§§§§§

“It seems a little dodgy for my liking,” Castiel sighed. He had gotten to the Winchesters before Farrah had; she’d wanted some solitude to investigate the church. In the meanwhile, Castiel had taken the opportunity to profess his concerns over Farrah’s character with the boys.

“What seems dodgy, C?” Farrah asked, appearing directly behind him just as he’d gotten the sentence out.

Castiel tensed, looking for a cover. “Just… the whole situation at the church, you know? We talked about this—it’s weird that the vessels don’t survive.”

“Problem is, we don’t _have_ a vessel here to test it out, remember? Neither of the two people that left that church had a partner.”

“Right,” Castiel replied, his voice low. He looked between the Winchesters. “Nothing adds up.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean assured.

“How do you propose we do that?”

“I—we’ll figure it out.”

“We could always wait for them to strike again,” Farrah suggested coolly. “Maybe next time they’ll catch a vessel. Although, and correct me if I’m mistaken, won’t you, Castiel—I’m a bit perplexed. The angels haven’t said anything about finding a new target.”

The three men looked between each other, all with pursed lips. Ignoring her callous initial proposal, Castiel shrugged. “Maybe they aren’t moving.”

“What sense does that make?”

“Plenty,” Sam interjected. “You said there were no successful vessels at that church, yeah?”

Farrah nodded slowly, trying to figure out what Sam was getting at.

“Maybe they’re hovering, hoping to give American Falls another go,” Sam suggested. “Could be wrong, I suppose, but it adds up.”

“Say you’re right,” Farrah replied, inclining her chin. “How do you figure we put a stop to it, since you lot are so clearly against Round Two?”

“You two have a communication line, don’t you?” Dean scoffed. “Listen for updates; that’s where we start.”

“In the meantime, it’s not like we have _no_ leads,” Castiel reminded. “There’s still the pastor and the churchgoer.”

“Right,” Farrah said as if she had forgotten. She inhaled sharply as she was stricken with an idea. “How about the three of you question our survivors? I’ll be back quickly, I promise.”

“Where are you going?” Dean asked, distrusting.

“I figure since I can fly I could go to Salt Lake—where the last massacre was—and see what I can find there. I’m _sure_ law enforcement has _some_ type of information, right? Even if it’s just depictions of the crime scenes. And, as far as I know, multiple people walked out of that church. There’s _bound_ to be a vessel.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sam breathed.

Castiel was still eyeing Farrah with suspicion. Still, her plan was a good one, so he played along.

§§§§§

Farrah, having never really worked a case herself, needed to make a few stops before heading directly to the Salt Lake City PD. She began by texting Dean to get some intel on making a fake investigator’s badge. After handling that, she got herself a nice suit and determined herself ready to play the part. Though the process cut significantly into her time, she figured it best to get it out of the way than get herself arrested.

She, the freshly minted Agent Maria Knopfler, held her posture still and straight as she approached the officers. “Gentlemen,” she greeted with a polite grin. “I wonder if I couldn’t have a word? It’ll only be a second.”

With pursed lips, the group of men turned to acknowledge her. There were three; one of them nodded to prompt her initiation of the discourse.

She took out her badge and displayed it for the officers. “My name is Maria Knopfler; I’m here with the FBI on account of the church massacre.”

“That was a month ago,” one of the men, who stood in the center of their group, replied gruffly, crossing his arms. “Took you lot long enough.”

Farrah tensed. “We’re sorry about the delay. I’ll gladly relay your concerns to my authorities, if you would like me to. In the meantime, the situation has gotten more dire. I’m sure you’ve heard what happened in American Falls, Idaho?”

The man who had spoken nodded. “Of course.”

The officer to his left added, “And West Wendover, Nevada. And Scottsdale, Arizona. And Murphys, California.”

“Right,” she breathed. “We’d like to put a stop to it.”

“We would have liked to stop it at Scottsdale, Ms. Knopfler.”

“Law enforcement isn’t perfect, Officer…” She trailed off, unsure of his name.

“Robinson. Phil Robinson.”

“Charmed, really,” Farrah assured. “As I said before, I do apologize for the delay. It in no way pleases me either. But let’s focus on the present, shall we? Before even _more_ massacres?”

Their dispositions shifted, and they looked slightly more willing to cooperate with her. “What do you need?” the man on the right asked after a short lull in conversation.

“I need whatever information you have from the crime scenes. Including the ones hit after the church.”

“Good luck making sense of any of it,” Robinson scoffed. Still, despite his lack of faith, he pushed through Farrah and his associates and pulled up the data she sought on the nearest computer. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’ve been around quite a few blocks, Officer. I’m almost certain I’ve seen everything.”

“You haven’t seen this.”

§§§§§

Sam, Dean, and Castiel, meanwhile, were busy with the two survivors from American Falls. They had split into two in effort to divide and conquer; Dean and Castiel questioned the pastor, and Sam took the churchgoer.

Sam immediately understood the reason Peter hadn’t accepted the angels’ plea to become a vessel. By his own admission, he, when he attended the sermon, was a staunch atheist—anti-theist, really—who had come on account of his parents’ insistence. He still was, to an extent, though, he had admitted the experience broadened his horizons considerably.

“I’m not sure if I would call it a ‘religious’ thing,” Peter said coolly. “If scenes like that are how the Judeo-Christian God expresses his presence, He’s not a figure I wish to worship, you know? It was the single most harrowing thing I could have experienced in that moment. No doubt.”

“Right,” Sam replied. “I was hoping you could provide some detail; what exactly happened in the church, Peter?”

“You said you’re with whom?”

“An independent news journal, sir. Just trying to collect some facts—warn people what’s going on. You have to know about the similar events around the west, yeah?”

Peter nodded and relaxed himself the best he could. “I’m not going into extreme detail, understand? There are some things that don’t need to be put into words.”

“As much as you’d like to provide.”

“It started with the thunderstorm; no—no it started with the old man next to me. Bastard didn’t make it out, but I remember him so damn clearly. I was going to exit early, you see, and this guy—he has to be in his seventies, and he takes my arm and holds it tight. Inhumanly tight, even. So I sit my ass back down; I don’t know _what_ was with him, but I didn’t want to contest it. After that, the storm started. The preacher’s down in the pulpit yelling about the angels coming down to Earth. Lights start exploding—not just going out. I mean legitimately bursting; there’s glass everywhere. The windows shatter; the entire building is shaking, and it’s pitch black—and no one’s doing _anything_. So I try again to get myself out, and I can’t. Then this earsplitting noise, like a high-pitched whistle, starts blasting my eardrums. And at some point in the whole thing I feel the old man let go of my arm. And it’s the damnedest thing, but I swear I heard someone asking me to invite them in. The pastor would probably insist it was the angels, but I have no idea what happened. The whole thing was so fucked; it was probably an audio-hallucination. Now, through a lot of this, I was tucked into myself. So, once it seemed like the chaos died down, I look around me and the whole congregation is dead—either with their eyes completely burnt out or, and this is the weird one, some people are just… gone. I’d assume they exploded, since the walls were completely drenched in blood, but that’s madness, right? I digress—the specifics don’t matter. Everyone is dead but me and that damned Pastor Gregory. And all he has to say for it is ‘That could have gone better.’ That’s it.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hell if I know. I told the local law enforcement to keep tabs on the man. Doubt they will, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“Absolutely not. Look, if you keep it off the record, I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“Off the record.”

“Cool. So, Pastor Gregory. New around town, you know. And he got here maybe two weeks ago—a transfer from Salt Lake City.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t a church massacre—”

“You’re damn right. And, of course, I found that sketchy from the jump. So I look into the guy—been up and down the western USA. Never seems to stay too long. Always seems to leave after some type of… mass murder. Recently, it’s been the churches, but before there were schools. And offices. Malls. This shit _follows_ him. And, honestly, no one in American Falls was too keen on him—except the truly devout religious people. Old lady Beverly—she died in the massacre. That woman worshiped the ground Gregory walked on. But a lot of other townsfolk are… less enthusiastic. We just don’t trust him, you know? He’s… there’s something not right about that man.”

Sam held his chin on an incline. “Thank you for all your help, Mr. Blake.”

“If I hear you went and put that information about Pastor Gregory in circulation, you’ll regret the day you were born. You understand me?”

“Trust me, Mr. Blake. I assure you that no sensitive information will be divulged. You have my word.”

As Sam was receiving more than enough from Peter Blake, Castiel and Dean were faring far worse with Pastor Gregory. He was a reserved man, contrary to his occupational habits.

“I don’t have anything to say about that church,” he insisted after any attempt to get him to talk. He was sitting rigidly, looking back and forth between Dean and Castiel.

“Pastor, you’re aware this is a federal investigation?” Dean asked gently.

“Of course. I saw the badges.”

“Right,” Dean sighed. “And you’re aware that withholding evidence is a crime?”

“Of course. Which is why I’m not withholding evidence.”

Dean felt his own muscles tense out of irritation. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You’re starting to sound like Peter Blake,” the pastor scoffed with a shake of his head. “Faith is power, Agent.”

“So, assuming you _aren’t_ withholding anything, how is it possible that… whatever it was that happened in that church didn’t get you too? Or Peter Blake, for that matter?”

“God works in mysterious ways, young man.”

“There’s mysterious and then there’s bullshit.”

“I believe it’s time for you to be on your ways,” the pastor said tersely. “I have nothing that you need, gentlemen. It’s been wonderful, really.”

“Like hell it is,” Dean all-but growled.

Castiel tugged at Dean’s sleeve. “It’s time, Dean,” he insisted urgently.

Dean narrowed his eyes, perplexed. Nonetheless, he obliged, giving a mock-polite nod to Pastor Gregory. “Good day, pastor.”

“Good day, gentlemen.”

Once out of Gregory’s earshot, Dean stopped Castiel and looked his friend up and down. “Are you mad?” he scoffed.

“No,” Castiel replied defiantly. “But I could see that man’s true face; he’s possessed, Dean.”

Dean sighed. “Demons. Of course it’s Demons.”

Castiel shook his head. “Angels.”

§§§§§

Officer Robinson lead Farrah to one of the homes that had been a crime scene. “Typically, we leave it up to the homeowner to get the scene cleared once we’re through with it.”

“I see they really jumped on that,” Farrah replied, her nose contorted as a response to the sight around her.

“Jerry Weaver lived here—alone. So nobody’s been around to bother. Inconvenient for the realty market, but incredibly useful for us right now.”

“And where is Jerry Weaver now?”

Robinson gestured around the room. “Take your pick.”

“Well, that’s settling.”

“You wanted in on this, princess.”

“Don’t take that tone,” Farrah snarled. “I’ve seen worse.” This was a fact; she _had_ , after all, witnessed the massacre in American Falls first-hand.

“I’m sure you have,” he scoffed. “Follow me; there’s more than a few strange things about this.”

Farrah arched a brow, but she obliged to his command and allowed him to guide her to the pair of angel wings scorched into the living room floor. “Interesting,” Farrah said, putting together the dots.

“Seen anything like it with the Bureau? Word at the station is it’s some kind of occult thing.”

“Something like that.”

§§§§§

“It’s angels,” Farrah and Castiel said simultaneously.

She had tipped the men off to her imminent return to Idaho, and it was timed out that the three separate parties met back up at the same time. And, even more conveniently, they’d drawn the same conclusion.

“But I don’t understand,” Farrah admitted, realizing the collective was on the same page. “Why are the angels offing one another?”

“That’s what we wanted to know,” Sam replied dryly.

“We were _hoping_ maybe you’d find something,” Dean admitted.

“I’ve got nothing but a messy death and a pair of angel wings,” Farrah sighed. “You and Cassandra talked to an angel who was _involved_ , though, did you not?”

“We did,” Castiel confirmed.

“And you found nothing?”

“He wasn’t in the caring-and-sharing mood,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes. “He’s definitely hiding something; I guarantee he’s got some type of knowledge.”

“Obviously, if he’s leading the church services that are getting these massacres going in the first place,” Farrah said. “But what’s the motive? Shouldn’t he be trying to help the angels get their vessels? Heaven’s devoting all its resources to finding Jack; you’d think the angels that actually act like they should—” She looked at Castiel with a shake of her head. “—would be intent on being… productive. I find it hard to believe he’s this incompetent incidentally, but I don’t understand his endgame.”

“So we’re missing something,” Sam said with a shrug.

“Clearly,” Farrah replied with a nod. “But how do you reckon we figure it out?”

Sam shook his head, at a loss. “Wait,” he said slowly, remembering details from his talk with Peter Blake. “I talked to our witness—Peter Blake—about what he saw when everything was going on. It completely slipped my mind, but his tip about Gregory wasn’t the only thing he told me.”

“Go on,” Farrah prompted, gesturing toward Sam.

“He mentioned this old man in the pews with what he thought was ‘inhuman’ levels of strength,” Sam said matter-of-factly. “Apparently the man grabbed Peter’s wrist to force him to be present for the remainder of the sermon and lost his grip sometime in and amongst the chaos. It might be nothing, but in this line of business it’s hard to hear something described as ‘inhuman’ without jumping to conclusions.”

“Think he was possessed?”

“I’d assume so.”

“An angel?”

“Perhaps, but I find it implausible. I mean, if the angels are searching for vessels and struggling, and if the old man was a viable vessel, why leave?”

“So then what?”

“Maybe it _is_ demons,” Dean interjected. “Some type of infiltration.”

“That’s actually a possibility, come to think,” Farrah said, crossing her arms. “The demons ought know the angels are in pursuit of that Nephilim, right? _Everyone’s_ looking for the kid. So I wonder if they haven’t been letting the angels do their vessel hunting and then taking the opportunity to off the ones that survive. Takes two pieces off the chessboard—one less angel, one less vessel strong enough to house one.”

“Wonderful. A tactical holy war is just what we need right now.”

“Don’t worry,” Farrah scoffed. “That’s my area of expertise.”

“Hilarious, really.”

“Your humorless ass aside, then, what do you propose we do about this—assuming this actually is two shitty operations at once?”

“There’s four of us, isn’t there? Divide and conquer. Two head off the demons; two take down the angels. Not too complicated.”

“Seems fair enough,” she conceded. “How are we splitting?”

“Sam and I can take the priest—he’s just one simple angel. _You_ two find those demons. I assume to do that you’ll need to find the next target sermon, and neither of us can help you there.”

Farrah looked between Castiel and Sam to try and weed out reservations. When she noted none, she turned back to Dean and shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”

§§§§§

After receiving communication from the angels confirming the next church, both pairs were now ready to take action. Sam and Dean loaded their duffels with holy oil, lighters, and an angel blade each and packed them haphazardly into the backseat of the Impala and climbed inside, bound to the pastor’s house; Castiel and Farrah made off to the church almost immediately.

Incidentally, things hadn’t gone to plan, as seemed to be the usual with the Winchesters.

When Sam and Dean arrived at Pastor Gregory’s abode, they were greeted not by Gregory but by a bruised and bloody Peter Blake who couldn’t stand, much less walk, on his own. They approached hesitantly, unsure what hell awaited them.

“I don’t bite,” Peter insisted, panting just to get out his words. “You’re just in time, lads.”

“Looks like,” Sam replied tensely. He looked Peter up and down then darted his gaze around the house. “What happened, Mr. Blake? Are you alright?”

“Do I look alright to you?” Peter scoffed. It was followed immediately by a guttural, bloody cough. He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. “I’ll survive,” he insisted dryly. “But the other question, I can’t answer. Been wondering that myself.”

“Can you tell us anything? Even if you don’t understand it?”

Peter nodded. “You’ll remember I told you about not trusting Pastor Gregory? I decided to stop in before his next sermon—make sure he knew he was being monitored, you know? So I swing by, and who am I met with but the old man from the pews and little old lady Beverly.”

“You said they were dead.”

“They were.”

“Right,” Sam sighed, piecing the story together. “Did you by chance see their eyes?”

“Of course I saw their eyes, boy. What—you think I avoided looking them in the eyes while they tore me to ribbons? I saw them.”

“Was there… This is going to sound like a strange question, so bear with me. Was there anything unusual about them?”

“Now that you mention, I think I saw Bev’s flicker black for a little bit sometime. But it must have been some crazy lighting trick. Why?”

“No reason.”

Sam and Dean looked to one another. The angels knew from communication on high the location of the next sermon; the brothers, however, did not. And though their angelic comrades were prepared to take on some demons, they had not prepared themselves for the pastor as well.

Farrah and Castiel arrived at the next church around the same time as the other patrons and, once again, lurked in the back—out of sight, out of earshot, out of mind. They scanned the crowd, hoping to catch any black eyes in the mix.

As it turned out, the demons found them first. Out of seemingly nowhere, Beverly had Castiel restrained as the old man looked Farrah over. “Never seen _you_ before,” he commented coolly, pacing around her. He stopped. “Is Heaven churning out new models now? Because, if so, I’m not a fan.”

“Cute,” she snarled. “But no. I’m the real deal—original recipe angel.”

“Fascinating, really,” he replied. He turned around to eye Castiel. “Now _you_ —you I know. Heaven’s most famous renegade—behind only Lucifer, of course.”

Castiel didn’t reply; he simply scowled.

“So what was the plan?” the old man continued. “Storm into our hunting grounds and snuff us out? We’re smarter than you give us credit for.” He nodded to Beverly, and she and Castiel were gone. Turning back to Farrah, he began to smirk. “I’ll give you an A for effort. Tell your winged friends that kid belongs to us, will you? As a favor, we’ll even take that pesky Castiel off their board; they’ve been at it for awhile, so I believe it’s of… mutual benefit.”

“Like hell you will,” Farrah scoffed. “I _will_ end you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” he challenged. He looked down to the pulpit. “Enjoy the sermon.”

He was gone.

Farrah immediately left, walking briskly and with a purpose, though she didn’t know where to head. She knew what was going to happen. She knew the sermon was destined to corrupt. She didn’t care. She had work to do.

She rang the Winchesters straight away after exiting the church. Conveniently enough, they were prepared to call her, as they had tried Castiel to no avail.

Dean answered his phone almost the instant it started to vibrate. “Farrah?” he asked abrasively, climbing into the Impala with Sam. He set it to speaker to bring Sam into the discussion. “What the hell is going on? You and Cas need to either work out a fast plan B or get the hell out of that church; our angel isn’t here. He’s—”

“He’s here. I know,” she informed, far calmer sounding than Dean but equally as tense. “You’re a little late to the party, Dean. Plan B is the only option we have at the moment.”

“What exactly _is_ plan B?” Sam asked.

“I’m working on it,” she sighed. “But we need to go fast.” Her breath was picking up as she grew progressively more flustered.

“What’s wrong, Farrah?” Sam queried, noting the distress in her voice.

“It’s Castiel,” she replied stiffly. “He—” She cut off as the angels began to descend on the church, clutching her phone to her chest and closing her eyes for a second. She exhaled deeply and put the phone back to her ear, now yelling to be able to hear herself over the commotion. “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Dean asked.

“I mean your hint came a bit late. The demons—they found us before we found them, caught us by surprise. They took C with them when they left. But I don’t know where they went. Or what’s going on. I assume you can hear the background? The church is being absolutely levelled behind me, Dean. _No one_ is coming out of this alive, and I’m completely out of ideas.”

“Calm down,” Sam insisted. “Look, no one’s angry about the church, alright? It’s not your fault. And there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

“We need to focus on finding Cas,” Dean added, putting the conversation back on track.

“Right, right,” she breathed. “Any ideas?”

“We’re working on it,” Sam replied, still the calmest voice in the conversation.

“Meet us back at our hotel,” Dean instructed. “We’ll figure out where to go from here.”

“Alright,” Farrah sighed.

The chaos around her ceased the instant she vacated.

In the midst of this, the demons had dragged Castiel back, as it would be, to the pastor’s home. Peter Blake was gone by this point, and the house had been their sanctuary for the duration of their stay in Idaho. They bound him to a chair with a set of angelic handcuffs; the entire time, he was snarling up at them, trying his damnedest to figure out an escape plan.

“Hey, beautiful,” the old man greeted, his head at an incline and his eyes looking down on Castiel. “How’s it going?”

“Go to Hell.”

“Been there, done that,” the old man scoffed. “Allow me to introduce myself.”

“I don’t care who you are.”

“My name is Timon,” the old man continued, ignoring Castiel’s protests. He gestured to lady Beverly. “That there is Prisca.”

“Congratulations.”

“Word on the street is you’ve got a link to that Nephilim boy,” Prisca said, inserting herself into the conversation.

“Oh, is it?” Castiel asked, raising an eyebrow. “And you believe every rumor you hear?”

“We believe this one,” Timon replied with a casual shrug. “Would you care to help us find him?”

“I’ll pass on that, thanks.”

“I don’t think he gets it,” Timon sighed to Prisca. He looked back to Castiel. “You’re going to help us find him.”

“Like hell I am.”

Castiel had been stalling for time when engaging in the conversation. Unbeknownst to Timon and Prisca, he’d taken a tough splinter from his chair and was working on picking the lock to the handcuffs. It wasn’t going too efficiently, but he persevered.

It worked.

He’d sprung himself free and, in record time, had his hand on Prisca’s forehead. With a burst of light, she was dead, and her vessel dropped to the floor. Smirking triumphantly, he turned back to Timon—or, at least, where he thought Timon was. In the time it to Castiel to smite Prisca, the other demon had fled and returned with a sizeable syringe containing an opaque black mixture. It had streaks of bluish white mixed in—undoubtedly angel’s grace. He’d never seen such a liquid before.

Castiel approached Timon. He put a hand to the demon’s forehead, smiting him, but not before Timon had buried the needle of the syringe deep into Castiel’s flesh, unleashing the mysterious substance into the angel’s veins. His vessel fell to the floor, and Castiel followed, clutching his arm in agony. Still, he was alive; the demons were not. He rummaged through Timon’s jacket and retrieved his cell phone, calling Dean as promptly as he could manage. He set the call to speaker and dropped his phone on the ground, winded and unable to hold the phone to his ear.

“Cas?” Dean answered. He, too, set it to speaker so Sam and Farrah could take part. “Cas, where the hell are you? Farrah said you were captured.”

“She’s not wrong,” Castiel panted. His body contorted as a response to the pain in his arm, but he refused to make too much noise should the Winchesters question him.

“Are you good?” Sam scoffed. “You sound exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” Castiel insisted.

“Where are you?” Farrah asked, repeating Dean’s question.

“Pastor Gregory’s basement.”

Farrah raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be there in a second.”

“It’s not—I’ll come to you,” Castiel said, trying to deter any of them from discovering the ailment as he refused to cause excessive panic.

“I’ll be there in a second,” Farrah repeated. She looked up to Sam and Dean. “You two stay on the line so we can communicate when I’m there.”

Dean nodded, and that was Farrah’s cue. She appeared by Castiel’s side, though she was initially unaware of the proximity, given his position on the floor. “ _Christ_ ,” she exclaimed, noting his condition. “What the hell, C?”

“I’m fine,” he continued to insist. However, a sharp pain overtook his entirety, and it was too much to stifle. He yelled out in response and doubled further over.

“Farrah?” Dean asked, hearing the distress. “What’s going on?”

She looked around the floor for any clues and noticed the syringe. She rolled her eyes and picked it up, examining the traces left behind. “Damn it,” she sighed. “It’s poison,” she told Dean, raising her voice so the phone would pick it up.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Castiel kept insisting.

“Shut up,” Farrah demanded. “You’re lucky I’ve seen this before; it was a favorite of dear Michael’s. And no, you’re not fine. This stuff isn’t a joke; it kills you slowly and painfully.”

“Can’t wait,” Castiel replied sarcastically.

“ _But_ there’s a cure. We just need to find whatever angel they took grace from.”

“Probably whoever’s inhabiting Pastor Gregory,” Sam interjected.

“Right,” she replied lightly. She paused for a brief moment to think. “No wonder I couldn’t tell he was possessed when we got here—must not have had enough grace at the time to register with me. Come on,” Farrah said to Castiel. She lifted him off the ground and flew back to the motel. “Hello, boys,” she greeted, laying the other angel on the bed.

Dean hung up the phone call, eyeing Castiel as he writhed in agony.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Farrah assured. “I need to find that Pastor; the cure isn’t too complicated, but I need some of his grace to make it.”

“Don’t get dead,” Dean replied.

“Not planning on it.”

With that, she was gone.

§§§§§

Castiel had been unresponsive to Sam and Dean’s attempts to clear the air, focused too intently on the indescribably hostile sensation consuming his body. The brothers kept trying to initiate conversation—with or without the angel—but with the sounds of his struggling in such proximity and volume, it was far too difficult to focus. Instead, they sat in silence, cringing at the noises he made and staring anywhere but at one another.

Eventually, Dean called up Mary, figuring that, as a mother, she should know what to do.

Farrah, meanwhile, was on the prowl. Her first stop was the church she had just been to with Castiel. However, it was a bust; the ecclesiastical was levelled—completely gone. She stood frozen, staring at the site in awe for a few seconds before bringing herself back to her mission. She had a hitlist of places in her mind—the church was only the first. Clearing her throat and stiffening her posture, she flew herself to the next target. Again, it was empty. The pastor’s house was left exactly how she had last seen it; the vessels of the two demons lay lifeless on the ground, the syringe on the floor beside the old man. She sighed and ran through her short list again.

Third time was the charm, it would seem, and she found the pastor alone at the first church that was hit in American Falls.

“I figured someone would be after me,” he scoffed as she approached. “I saw what was left of my—or, I suppose my _vessel’s_ —home.”

“Then I assume you know what I’m looking for.”

He pursed his lips and gestured to his neck. “I have a guess. Although, I’ve got to admit—you aren’t what I was expecting, young lady.”

“Oh? What might that be?”

“Either the belligerent one or his silent angel friend. You working with them or against them?”

“I’m working for myself, Pastor.”

“Please. Isaiah.”

“ _That’s_ where you’ve been hiding this whole time? The American west?”

“Not hiding,” he insisted. “Merely lurking.”

“Oh, well, in that case, everything’s cleared,” Farrah snarled.

“Who might you be, little lady?”

“Farrah.”

“Farrah A or Farrah B?”

“Farrah.”

“Quite the tongue on you.”

“What’s your angle, Isaiah?”

“Compensation.”

Farrah raised an eyebrow.

“The demons do far better business than Heaven. I help them take down a few angels, and they’re willing to pay quite handsomely.”

“Ever the opportunist.”

“What you call opportunistic, I call good business.”

“Won’t be such good business when I run you dry.”

“Feisty.”

“Your little black-eyed pimps poisoned my friend,” Farrah growled, taking a step toward him. “I’ve earned feisty.”

“So you _are_ working with Castiel.”

Farrah shrugged.

“Heaven and Hell have been dying to catch him, you know.”

“I’ve heard.”

“You’d be rewarded heavily if you’d turn him in rather than hide him.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

Now he took a step toward her. “That’s probably for the better. I was hoping to take him myself.”

Simultaneously, the two dropped angel blades from there sleeves. Farrah stood still as Isaiah approached her. As he drew near arm’s reach, she flew to his original position in the destroyed pulpit. “Catch me if you can, Isaiah,” she taunted with a smirk.

“You bitch,” he growled. He broke out into a run to catch her.

Again, she thwarted his effort, flying back to what was her original post now. “Alright,” she conceded. “Enough games. I’m here. Come get me.”

Isaiah took up her offer. Once he stood before her, he made to end the fight with one clean hit to her torso. However, before he could, she was behind him. She held her blade to his neck along with a vial she’d had in her pocket and deftly extracted the remainder of his grace before stabbing his now human body through the back for good measure.

Before heading back to the motel, she procured a few necessary ingredients for her cure. Then, triumphantly, she returned to Team Free Will, holding the vial of Isaiah’s grace on display. “Afternoon, gentlemen,” she greeted. She noted Castiel’s deteriorating state and instantly got to work on her remedy.

As the cure required the slightest amount of Castiel’s grace to activate, she gingerly approached him with her blade and removed the necessary portion before sealing the laceration. He’d barely noticed she’d done anything as he was preoccupied by the pain of the poison.

“Alright,” she said, adding the trace of his grace into the cure. “Drink,” she commanded him, taking his head in her hand and forcing the cure into him.

There was a bright light, and, once it had dissipated, there was nary a sign Castiel had been agonized in the first place. Farrah was gone before any of the men could thank her.


End file.
